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FOUNDATIONS 
of CHRISTIANITY 


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imprint of INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS 


LITERATURE and REVOLUTION 
By Leon Trotsky 


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FOUNDATIONS 
of CHRISTIANTTY 


meolbLUDY IN CHRISTIAN ORIGINS 
By KARL KAUTSKY 


Authorized Translation from the 
Thirteenth German Edition 





NEW YORK 


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1925 








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TABLE OF CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


PART ONE 


THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 


CHAPTER I. THE PAGAN SOURCES 
CHAPTER II. THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 


CuaptTerR III, THE STRUGGLE FOR THE IMAGE OF JESUS 


PART TWO 
ROMAN SOCIETY IN THE IMPERIAL PERIOD 


CHAPTER I. THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 


a. Property in Land; b. Domestic Slavery; c. Slavery in the Production 
of Commodities; d. The Technical Inferiority of the Slave-Holding System; 
e. The Economic Decline. 


CHAPTER II. THE LIFE OF THE STATE 


a. The State and Trade; b. Patricians and Plebeians; c. The Roman 
State; d. Usury; e. Absolutism. 


CHAPTER III. CuRRENTS oF THOUGHT IN THE ROMAN 
IMPERIAL PERIOD 


a. Weakening of Social Ties; b. Credulity; c. The Resort to Lying; 
d. Humanitarianism; e. Internationalism; f. The Tendency to Religion; 
g. Monotheism. 


21 
28 
38 


47 


86 


II4 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PART THREE 
THE JEWS 


CHAPTER I. THE PEOPLE oF ISRAEL 


a. Semitic Tribal Migrations; b. Palestine; c. The Conception of God in 
Ancient Israel; d. Trade and Philosophy; e. Trade and Nationality; 
f. Canaan a Thoroughfare of Nations; g. Class Struggles in Israel; h. The 
Downfall of Israel; i. The First Destruction of Jerusalem. 


CuapTerR II. THe Jews AFTER THE EXILE 


a. Banishment; b. The Jewish Diaspora; c. The Jewish Propaganda; 
d. Hatred of the Jews; e. Jerusalem; f. The Sadducees; g. The Pharisees; 
h. The Zealots; i. The Essenes. 


PART FOUR 
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 


CHAPTER I. THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 


a. The Proletarian Character of the Congregation; b. Class Hatred; 
c. Communism; d. The Objections to Communism; e. Contempt for Labor; 
f. The Destruction of the Family. 


CHAPTER II. THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 


a. The Coming of the Kingdom of God; b. The Ancestry of Jesus; 
c. Jesus as a Rebel; d. The Resurrection of the Crucified; e. The Inter- 
national Redeemer. 


CuHaptTerR III. JEwisH CHRISTIANS AND PAGAN CuHRISs- 
TIANS 


a. The Agitation among the Pagans; b. The Opposition between Jews 
and Christians. 


CHAPTER IV. THE Story oF CHrRIST’s PASSION 


CHAPTER V. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ORGANIZATION OF 
THE CONGREGATION 


a. Proletarians and Slaves; b. The Decline of Communism; c. Apostles, 
Prophets and Teachers; d. The Bishop; e. The Monastery. 


CHAPTER VI. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 


INDEX 


187 


227 


323 


355 


382 


395 


408 


459 
475 


INTRODUCTION 


I HAVE long been interested in Christianity and Biblical criti- 
cism. Fully twenty-five years ago I contributed an article to 
Kosmos, on the origin of prehistoric bible history, and two 
years later I wrote another for the Neue Zeit on the origin of 
Christianity. It is therefore an old hobby to which I am now 
returning. The occasion for this return was the necessity of pre- 
paring the second edition of my Forerunners of Socialism. 

The criticisms of the latter book—those that I had the oppor- 
tunity to read—had found fault particularly with the Introduc- 
tion, in which I had given a short outline of the communism of 
primitive Christianity. It was declared that my view was one 
that would not bear the light of the knowledge resulting from the 
latest investigations. 

Soon after these criticisms appeared, Gohre and others pro- 
claimed that this view—namely, that nothing definite could be 
said about the personality of Jesus, and that Christianity could 
be explained without reference to this personality—first advocated 
by Bruno Bauer and later accepted in its essential points by 
Franz Mehring and myself, and formulated by me as early as 
1885, was now out of date. 

I therefore did not wish to publish a new edition of my book, 
which had appeared thirteen years before, without first care- 
fully revising, on the basis of the latest literature on the subject, 
the notions of Christianity which I had obtained from earlier 
studies. . 

As a result I came to the gratifying conclusion that nothing 
needed to be changed, but the later investigations did open up to 
me a multitude of new points of view and new suggestions, which 
expanded the revision of my Introduction to the Forerunners 
into a whole book. 

Of course, I make no claim that I am exhausting the subject, 
which is far too gigantic to be exhausted. I shall be satisfied if 

7 


8 INTRODUCTION 


I have succeeded in contributing to an understanding of those 
phases of Christianity which strike me as the most essential from 
the standpoint of the materialistic conception of history. 

Nor can I venture to compare myself in learning, as to matters 
of religious history, with the theologians who have made this 
study their life task, whereas I have had to write the present 
volume in the few hours of leisure that my editorial and political 
activities have allowed me, in a period when the present moment 
was quite sufficient to monopolize the attention of any person 
participating in the class struggles of our times, to such an ex- 
tent that little time was available for the past: I am referring to 
the time between the opening of the Russian Revolution of 1905 
and the outbreak of the Turkish Revolution of 1908. 

But possibly my intensive share in the class struggles of the 
proletariat has afforded me precisely such glimpses of the essence 
of primitive Christianity as may remain inaccessible to the pro- 
fessors of Theology and Religious History. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau has the following passage in his Julie, 
ou la Nouvelle Hélotse: 

“Tt seems ridiculous to me to attempt to study society (le 
monde) as a mere observer. He who wishes only to observe will 
observe nothing, for as he is useless in actual work and a nuisance 
in recreations, he is admitted to neither. We observe the actions 
of others only to the extent to which we ourselves act. In the 
school of the World as in that of Love, we must begin with the 
practical exercise of that which we wish to learn.” (Part II, 
Letter 17.) 

This principle, here limited to the study of man, may be ex- 
tended to apply to the investigation of all things. Nowhere will 
much be gained by mere observation without practical participa- 
tion. This is true even of the investigation of such remote objects 
as the stars. Where would astronomy be today if it should be 
limited to mere observation, if it should not be combined with 
practice, with the use of the telescope, spectral analysis, photog- 
raphy! But this principle holds true even more when applied to 
the things of this earth, with which our practice has a habit of 
forcing us into a much closer contact than that of mere observa- 


INTRODUCTION 9 


tion. What we learn from the mere observation of things is 
mighty little when compared with that which our practical work 
on these things and with these things gives us. Let the reader 
merely recall the immense importance which the experimental 
method has attained in the natural sciences. 

Experiments cannot be made, as a means of investigating 
human society, but the practical activity of the investigator is 
nevertheless by no means of secondary importance; however, the 
conditions for his success are similar to the conditions for a fruit- 
ful experiment. These conditions are a knowledge of the most 
important results obtained by other investigators, and a famil- 
iarity with a scientific method that will sharpen the appreciation 
for the essential point of each phenomenon, enabling the investi- 
gator to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, and re- 
vealing the common element in varying experiences. 

The thinker equipped with these faculties, and studying a 
field in which he is engaged in active work, will have no trouble 
in arriving at conclusions to which he would have had no access 
had he remained a mere observer. 

This holds true particularly of history. A practical politician, 
if equipped with sufficient scientific training, will more easily 
understand the history of politics, and more swiftly find his bear- 
ings in its study than a closet-philosopher who has never had the 
slightest practical acquaintance with the motive forces of politics. 
And the investigator will find his practical experience to be of 
particular value, if he is engaged in studying a movement of the 
class of society in which he himself has been active, and with 
whose peculiar character he is therefore best acquainted. 

This familiarity with the facts was hitherto almost exclusively 
within the reach of the possessing classes, who monopolized learn- 
ing. The movements of the lower classes of society have as yet 
found few appreciative students. 

Christianity in its beginnings was without doubt a movement 
of impoverished classes of the most varied kinds, which may be 
named by the common term “proletarians”, provided this expres- 
sion be understood as meaning not only wage-workers. A man 
who has become familiar with the modern proletarian movement, 


10 INTRODUCTION 


and who understands the common element of its phases in the 
various countries by having worked actively in it; a man who has 
learnt to live in the feelings and aspirations of the proletariat, 
fighting by their side, may lay claim to an ability to understand 
many things about the beginnings of Christianity more easily 
than scholars who have always viewed the proletariat only from 
afar. 

But while the scientifically trained practical politician has the 
advantage of the mere book scholar in many ways in writing 
his history, this advantage is often effectively counterbalanced 
by the stronger temptation to which the practical politician is 
exposed, to permit his detachment to be disturbed. Two dangers 
particularly threaten the historical productions of practical poli- 
ticians more than those of other investigators: in the first place, 
they may attempt to mold the past entirely after the image of 
the present, and, in the second place, they may seek to behold 
the past in the light of the needs of their present-day policy. 

But we Socialists, in so far as we are Marxists, feel that we 
have an excellent protection against these dangers in the mate- 
rialistic conception of history, so intimately connected with our 
proletarian point of view. 

The traditional conception of history views political movements 
only as the struggle to bring about certain specific political insti- 
tutions—Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy, etc.—which in turn 
are represented as the result of specific ethical concepts and 
aspirations. But if our conception of history does not advance 
beyond this point, if we do not seek the basis of these ideas, 
aspirations and institutions, we are soon brought up against the 
fact that in the course of the centuries these things suffer only 
superficial changes, remaining the same at bottom; that we are 
always dealing with the same ideas, aspirations, and institutions, 
recurring again and again; that all of history is one long unin- 
terrupted struggle for liberty and equality, which meets again and 
again with oppression and inequality, which never is realized, but 
is never completely destroyed. 

Wherever the champions of liberty and equality have for a 
moment been victorious, they have always transformed their vic- 


INTRODUCTION 11 


tory into a basis for new oppression and inequality, resulting in 
the immediate rise of new combatants for liberty and equality. 
The whole course of history therefore appears as a cycle always 
returning to its initial point, an eternal repetition of the same 
drama, with only the costumes changed, and with no real advance- 
ment for humanity. ; 

He who holds this view will always be inclined to depict the 
past in the image of the present, and the more he knows man as 
he is now, the more he will attempt to depict man in previous 
ages according to his present model. Opposed to this view of 
history is another, which does not content itself with a considera- 
tion of historical ideas, but seeks to run down their causes, lying 
at the very basis of society. In applying this method, we again 
and again encounter the mode of production, which in turn is 
always dependent on the level of technical progress; although not 
on that alone. 

As soon as we undertake an investigation of the technical 
resources and the mode of production of antiquity, we at once 
lose the notion that the same tragicomedy is eternally repeating 
itself on the world stage. The economic history of man shows a 
continuous evolution from lower to higher forms, which is, how- 
ever, by no means uninterrupted or uniform in direction. But 
once we have investigated the economic conditions of human 
beings in the various historical periods, we are freed at once from 
the illusion of an eternal recurrence of the same ideas, aspirations, 
and political institutions. We now learn that the same words 
may in the course of centuries alter their meanings, that ideas 
and institutions resembling each other externally have a different 
content, having arisen from the needs of different classes and 
under different circumstances. The freedom which the modern 
proletarian demands is quite different from that which was the 
aspiration of the representatives of the Third Estate in 1789, and 
this freedom in its turn was fundamentally different from that 
which the Knighthood of the German Empire struggled for at 
the beginning of the Reformation. 

Once we have ceased to regard political struggles as mere con- 


12 INTRODUCTION 


flicts concerning abstract ideas or political institutions, and have 
revealed their economic basis, we are ready to understand that 
in this field, as well as in that of technology and the mode of 
production, a constant evolution toward new forms is going on, 
that no epoch completely resembles any other epoch, that the 
same slogans and the same arguments may at various times have 
very different meanings. 

Our proletarian point of view will permit us to grasp more 
easily than bourgeois investigators those phases of primitive 
Christianity which it has in common with the modern proletarian 
movement. But the emphasis placed upon economic conditions, 
which is a necessary corollary of the materialistic conception of 
history, preserves us from the danger of forgetting the peculiar 
character of the ancient proletariat merely because we grasp the 
common element in both epochs. The characteristics of the 
ancient proletariat were due to its peculiar economic position, 
which, in spite of many resemblances, nevertheless made its 
aspirations entirely different from those of the modern proletariat. 

While the Marxist view of history guards us from the danger 
of measuring the past with the standard of the present and sharp- 
ens our appreciation of the peculiarity of each epoch and each 
nation, it also frees us from the other danger, that of attempting 
to adapt our presentation of the past to the immediate practical 
interest we are defending in the present. 

Surely no honest man, whatever may be his point of view, will 
permit himself to be misled into a conscious forgery of the past. 
But nowhere is the investigator so much in need of an unpreju- 
diced mind as in the social sciences, and in no field is it harder 
to attain such a standpoint. 

For the task of science is not simply a presentation of that 
which is, giving a faithful photograph of reality, so that any nor- 
mally constituted observer will form the same image. The task 
of science consists in observing the general, essential element in 
the mass of impressions and phenomena received, and thus pro- 
viding a clue by means of which we can find our bearings in the 
labyrinth of reality. 


INTRODUCTION 13 


The task of art, moreover, is quite similar. Art also does not 
merely give us a photograph of reality; the artist must reproduce 
that which strikes him as the essential point, the characteristic 
fact of the reality he sets out to depict. The difference between 
art and science is in the fact that the artist represents the essential 
in a physical and tangible form, through which he impresses us, 
while the thinker represents the essential in the form of a con- 
ception, an abstraction. 

The more complicated a phenomenon and the smaller the num- 
ber of phenomena with which it may be compared, the more 
difficult is it to segregate that which is essential in it from that 
which is accidental. The more will the subjective characteristic 
of the investigator and reproducer make itself felt. All the more 
indispensable is it therefore that his glance be clear and un- 
prejudiced. 

There is probably no more complicated phenomenon than hu- 
man society, the society of humans, each one of whom in himself 
is more complicated than any other creature that we know. In 
addition, the number of social organisms that may be compared 
with each other, on the same level of development, is relatively 
quite small. It is not a marvel, therefore, that the scientific study 
of society should have begun later than that of any other sphere 
of experience; nor is it a marvel that just in this field the views 
of students should be so widely divergent. 

These difficulties are furthermore magnified if the various in- 
vestigators, as is so frequently the case in the social sciences, 
have practical interests of very different, often opposed tendencies, 
in the results of their investigations, which does not mean that 
these practical interests must be merely personal in their nature; 
they may be very definitely class interests. 

It is manifestly quite impossible to preserve a judicial attitude 
toward the past while one is interested in any way in the social 
oppositions and struggles of one’s own time, beholding in these 
present-day phenomena a repetition of the oppositions and strug- 
gles of the past. The latter become mere precedents, involving 
a justification and condemnation of the former, for now the pres- 
ent depends on our judgment of the past. What man who is really 


14 INTRODUCTION 


interested in his cause could remain fair-minded? The more he 
is attached to the cause, the more important do those facts of 
the past become to him—and he will emphasize them as essential 
—which seem to support his own view, while he relegates to the 
background those facts that seem to support the opposite view. 
The student becomes a moralist or an advocate, glorifying or 
branding specific phenomena of the past because he is an advo- 
cate or a foe of similar phenomena of the present, such as the 
Church, the Monarchy, Democracy, etc. 

The case becomes quite different, however, when the student 
recognizes, as a result of his economic understanding, that there 
are no mere repetitions in history, that the economic conditions 
of the past are gone never to return, that the former class opposi- 
tions and class struggles are essentially different from those of 
the present day, and that therefore our modern institutions and 
ideas, in spite of all their external identity with those of the past, 
are nevertheless of entirely different content. The student now 
understands that each epoch must be measured by its own stand- 
ard, that the aspirations of the present day must be based on 
present-day conditions, that successes and failures in the past 
have very little meaning when considered alone, and that a mere 
invocation of the past in order to justify present-day demands 
may be downright misleading. The democrats and the prole- 
tarians of France found this out time and time again in the last 
century when they placed their faith more in the “teachings” of 
the French Revolution than in an understanding of actually exist- 
ing class relations. 

He who accepts the standpoint of the economic conception of 
history can adopt a completely unprejudiced view of the past, 
even though he be actively involved in the practical struggles of 
the present. His work can only sharpen his glance for many 
phenomena of the past, not render it dim. 

Such was the purpose of my presentation of the bases of primi- 
tive Christianity. I had no intention of either glorifying or 
belittling it, merely the desire to understand it. I knew that no 
matter what results I might arrive at, the cause in which I struggle 


INTRODUCTION aes 


could not suffer thereby. In whatever light the proletarians of 
the Imperial Era might appear to me, whatever their aspirations, 
and the results of those aspirations, there is no doubt they were 
completely different from the modern proletariat, struggling and 
working in an entirely different situation and with entirely dif- 
ferent resources. Whatever the great accomplishments and suc- 
cesses, the petty defects and defeats, of the ancient proletarians, 
they could mean nothing in forming an estimate of the nature and 
the prospects of the modern proletariat, either from a favorable 
or an unfavorable standpoint. 

But, this being the case, is there any practical purpose at all 
in occupying oneself with history? The common view regards 
history as a chart for him who navigates the sea of political 
activity; this chart must indicate the cliffs and shallows on which 
previous mariners have come to grief, and enable their successors 
to sail the seas with impunity. However, if the navigable chan- 
nels of history are constantly changing, the shallows shifting, and 
forming again in other spots, and if every pilot must pick his way 
by making new soundings for his own navigation of the channels; 
if a mere following of the old chart only too often leads us astray, 
wherefore study history at all, except perhaps as a pet hobby? 

The reader who makes this assumption is indeed throwing away 
the wheat with the chaff. 

If we would retain the above figure of speech, we must admit 
that history as a permanent chart for the pilot of a ship of state 
is indeed of no use; but this does not mean that it has no other 
use for him; the utility he will draw from it is of a different 
nature. He must use history as a sounding line, as a means of 
studying the channels in which he is navigating, of understanding 
them and his position in them. The sole way to understand a 
phenomenon is to learn how it arose. I cannot understand 
present-day society unless I know the manner in which it has 
come to be, how its various phenomena: Capitalism, Feudalism, 
Christianity, Judaism, etc., have developed. 

If I would have a clear idea of the social function, the tasks 
and the prospects of the class to which I belong or to which I 
have attached myself, I must gain an understanding of the exist- 


16 INTRODUCTION 


ing social organism, I must learn to grasp it from every angle, 
which is an utter impossibility unless I have traced its growth. 
It is impossible to be a conscious and far-sighted warrior in the 
class struggle without an understanding of the evolution of society. 
Without such understanding one remains dependent on the im- 
pressions of one’s immediate surroundings and of the immediate 
moment, and one is never certain that these impressions will not 
tempt one into channels that apparently lead to the goal, but 
actually bring one among cliffs from which there is no escape. 

To be sure many class struggles have succeeded in spite of the 
fact that the participants have had no clear conception of the 
essential nature of the society in which they lived. The conditions 
for such a successful struggle are vanishing in present-day society, 
just as it is becoming increasingly absurd in this society to permit 
oneself to be led in one’s choice of food and drink by instinct and 
tradition merely. These guides were perhaps sufficient under 
simple, natural conditions. The more artificial our conditions of 
life become, owing to the advance of industry and of the natural 
sciences, the more they depart from nature, the more necessary 
for the individual is the scientific knowledge required for choos- 
ing, from among the superabundance of artificial products which 
are available, those that are most suitable for his organism. While 
men drank water only, it was sufficient to have an instinct leading 
them to seek good spring water and avoid stagnant swamp water. 
But this instinct is helpless in the presence of our manufactured 
beverages; scientific understanding now becomes an absolute 
necessity. 

Very similar is the case in politics and in social activity in gen- 
eral. In the communities of antiquity, often very small, with 
their simple and transparent conditions, remaining changeless for 
centuries, tradition and “plain common sense”—in other words, 
the good judgment which the individual had gained from personal 
experience—were sufficient to show him his place and his func- 
tions in society. But today, in a society whose market embraces 
the entire world, which is in process of constant transformation, 
of industrial and social revolution, in which the workers are 
organizing themselves into an army of millions, and the capitalists 


INTRODUCTION 17 


are accumulating billions in money, it is impossible for a rising 
class, a class that cannot content itself with the retention of the 
status quo, which is obliged to aim at a complete reconstruction 
of society, to conduct its class struggle intelligently and success- 
fully by a mere resort to “plain common sense” and to the detail 
work of practical men. It becomes a necessity for every com- 
batant to broaden his horizon through scientific understanding, 
to grasp the operation of great social forces in time and space, 
not in order to abolish the work in detail, or even relegate it to 
the background, but in order to align it in a definite relation with 
the social process as a whole. This becomes all the more neces- 
sary since this society, now practically embracing the entire globe, 
is pushing further and further its division of labor, limiting the 
individual more and more to a single specialty, to a single opera- 
tion, and thus tending to progressively lower his mental standard, 
to make him more dependent and less capable of understanding 
the process as a whole, which simultaneously is expanded into 
gigantic proportions. 

It then becomes the duty of every man who has made the ad- 
vancement of the proletariat his life work, to oppose this tendency 
toward spiritual stagnation and stupidity, and to direct the atten- 
tion of proletarians to great points of view, to large prospects, 
to worthy goals. 

There is hardly any way of doing this more effectively than 
by a study of history, by viewing and grasping the evolution of 
society over great periods of time, particularly when this evolution 
has embraced immense social movements whose operation con- 
tinues down to the present day. 

To give the proletariat a social understanding, a self-conscious- 
ness and a political maturity, to make it capable of forming large 
mental visions, for this purpose we must study the historical 
process, with the aid of the materialistic conception of history. 
Under these circumstances the study of the past, far from being 
a mere antiquarian hobby, becomes a mighty weapon in the strug- 
gle of the present, with the purpose of achieving a better future. 

K. KautTsky 
Berlin, September, 1908, 









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FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


PART ONE 


THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 


I. THE PAGAN SOURCES 


WHATEVER may be our attitude toward Christianity, we must 
recognize it as one of the most gigantic phenomena in human 
history as known to us. We cannot regard without intense ad- 
miration the Christian Church, which has lasted for nearly twenty 
centuries, and which we behold still full of strength, in many coun- 
tries stronger even than the State. Everything, therefore, which 
can contribute to an understanding of this imposing phenomenon 
becomes an extremely important present concern of great prac- 
tical significance; such is our attitude toward the study of the 
origin of this organization, which will take us back thousands of 
years in history. 

The present strength of Christianity leads us to regard the 
study of its beginnings with far greater interest than any other 
historical investigation, even though it take us back only two 
centuries; * but it also makes the investigation of these beginnings 
more difficult than they would otherwise have been. 

The Christian Church has become an organization of domi- 
nation, either in the interest of its own dignitaries, or the dig- 
nitaries of another organization, the State, where the latter 
has succeeded in getting control of the Church. He who would 
fight these powers must also fight the Church. The struggle for 
the Church, as well as the struggle against the Church, has there- 
fore become a party cause, with which the most important eco- 
nomic interests are bound up. Of course, this condition is only 
too likely to obscure the objective pursuit of an historical study 
of the Church, and for a long time it has caused the ruling classes 
to forbid any investigations of the beginnings of Christianity at 
all, to attribute a divine character to the Church, standing above 
and beyond all human criticism. 

The bourgeois “enlightenment” of the Eighteenth Century 

1 Obviously a reference to the foundation of the Prussian Kingdom in 1701.~ 


TRANSLATOR. 
21 


22 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


finally succeeded in disposing of this divine halo once for all. 
Not until then was the scientific investigation of the origin of 
Christianity possible. But strange to say, lay science kept aloof 
from this field even in the Nineteenth Century, seemed to regard 
it as still exclusively belonging to the realm of theology, and as no 
concern of science at all. A great number of historical works, 
written by the most important bourgeois historians of the Nine- 
teenth Century, and treating of the Roman Imperial Period, 
timidly steer clear of the most important phenomenon of this 
epoch, namely, the rise of Christianity. Thus Mommsen, in the 
fifth volume of his Roman History, has a detailed study of 
the history of the Jews under the Caesars, and is unable to evade 
some occasional mention of Christianity in this section, but Chris- 
tianity appears in his work as an accomplished fact, the knowl- 
edge of whose existence is presupposed. On the whole, only 
theologians and their opponents, the freethinking propagandists, 
have hitherto shown any interest in the beginnings of Chris- 
tianity. 

But it is not necessarily cowardice which has deterred bourgeois 
historians, in so far as they were producing only history and not 
also controversial literature, from occupying themselves with the 
origin of Christianity. Sufficient reason for not going into this 
question was perhaps the unfortunate meagerness of the sources 
from which we must draw our knowledge of this subject. 

Christianity according to the traditional view is the creation 
of a single man, Jesus Christ, and this view is by no means entirely 
superseded. To be sure, at least in “enlightened”, “cultured” 
circles Jesus is no longer considered a God, but he is still regarded 
as an extraordinary personage, who set out to found a new re- 
ligion and succeeded in this effort to the remarkable degree that 
is so generally apparent. This view is held not only by enlight- 
ened theologians, but also by radical freethinkers, the latter dis- 
tinguishing themselves from the theologians only by the criticism 
which they make of the personality of Jesus, from which they 
attempt to subtract so far as possible everything that is noble. 

However, even before the end of the Eighteenth Century, the 
English historian Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall 


THE PAGAN SOURCES 23 


of the Roman Empire (written from 1774 to 1788), pointed out 
with delicate irony the striking fact that not one of the contem- 
poraries of Jesus had reported anything about him, in spite of the 
fact that he was alleged to have performed such marvelous 
deeds. 

“But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the pagan 
and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented 
by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their 
senses? During the age.of Christ, of his apostles, and of their 
first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed 
by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the 
sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, 
and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit 
of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside 
from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations 
of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alteration in the 
moral or physical government of the world.” 

According to the Christian tradition, the whole earth, or at 
least all Palestine, was covered with darkness for three hours 
after the death of Jesus. This took place within the life of the 
elder Pliny, who has a special chapter in his Natural History on 
the subject of eclipses; but he says nothing of this eclipse (Gib- 
bon, Chapter xv Decline and Fall, London, 1895; vol. ii, pp. 
69-70). 

But even if we disregard the miracles, it is hard to understand 
that a character like the Jesus of the Gospels, who, according to 
report, aroused such commotion in men’s minds, could carry on 
his agitation and finally die as a martyr to his cause without 
having his pagan and Hebrew contemporaries devote even so 
much as a word to him. 

The first mention of Jesus by a non-Christian is found in the 
Jewish Antiquities of Josephus Flavius. The Third Chapter of 
the Eighteenth Book, which treats of the Procurator Pontius 
Pilate, says, among other things: 

“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be 
named a man, for he achieved miracles and was a teacher of men, 
who gladly accepted his truth, and found many adherents among 


24 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Jews and Hellenes. This man was the Christ. Although Pilate 
then had him crucified on the accusation of the most excellent 
men of our people, those who had first loved him remained faith- 
ful to him nevertheless. For on the third day he appeared to 
them again, arisen to a new life, as God’s prophets had prophesied 
this and thousands of other miraculous things of him. From him 
the Christians take their name; their sect (¢Aov) has since 
then not ceased.” 

Josephus again speaks of Christ in the Twentieth Book, Ninth 
Chapter, 1, saying that the High Priest Ananus, under the rule 
of the Governor Albinus (in the time of Nero), had succeeded in 
having “James, the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ (tot 
Aeyouevou xpiotot), haled to court, together with a number of 
others, indicted as transgressors of the law, and stoned.” 

These evidences have always been much esteemed by Chris- 
tians, for they are the word of a non-Christian, of a Jew and 
Pharisee, who was born in the year 37 A.D., and who lived in 
Jerusalem, and who therefore might very well have had authentic 
information concerning Jesus. Furthermore, his testimony is the 
more important, since, being a Jew, he had no cause to color the 
facts in favor of the Christians. 

But precisely this excessive laudation of Christ by the pious 
Jew made this passage in his work seem suspicious even to early 
students. Its authenticity was already questioned in the Sixteenth 
Century, and it is now certain that it is a forgery and not written 
by Josephus at all.’ 

It was added in the course of the Third Century by a Christian 
copyist, who evidently was offended at Josephus’ failure to give 
any information concerning the person of Jesus, while he repeats 
the most childish gossip from Palestine. The pious Christian 
rightly felt that the absence of any such mention was equivalent 
to a denial of the existence, or at least of the importance of his 
Savior, and the exposure of his interpolation has practically be- 
come an evidence against Jesus. 

But the passage concerning James is also of very dubious na- 


2 Compare, among others, Schtirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes im Zeit- 
alter Jesu Christi, vol. i, Third Edition, 1901, p. 544 f. 


THE PAGAN SOURCES 25 


ture. It is true that Origen, who lived from 185 to 254 A.D., men- 
tions, in his commentary on Matthew, a passage in Josephus con- 
cerning James. He remarks in this connection that it is peculiar 
that Josephus nevertheless did not believe in Jesus as the Christ. 
He again quotes this statement of Josephus on James in his po- 
lemic against Celsus, and again points out Josephus’ skepticism. 
These words of Origen are one of the evidences showing that 
Josephus in the original form did not have the passage concerning 
Jesus in which he recognizes the latter as the Christ, the Messiah. 
It now appears that the passage concerning James, which Origen 
found in Josephus, is also a Christian interpolation, for this pas- 
sage as quoted by Origen is entirely different from that contained 
in the manuscripts of Josephus that have been handed down. 
Origen’s quotation represents the destruction of Jerusalem as a 
punishment for the execution of James. This interpolation did 
not pass into the other manuscripts of Josephus, and has there- 
fore not been preserved. But the passage that has been handed 
down in our manuscripts of Josephus, on the other hand, is not 
quoted by Origen, while he thrice mentions the others in various 
connections. And this in spite of the fact that he had carefully 
quoted all the evidences in Josephus which were likely to favor 
the Christian faith. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the 
passage in Josephus that has been handed down to us Is also a 
forgery, and that it was interpolated by some pious Christian, 
to the greater glory of God, after the time of Origen, but before 
that of Eusebius, who quotes it. 

Not only the mention of Jesus and James in Josephus, but also 
that of John the Baptist (Antiquities, xviii, Chapter v, 2) 
is under suspicion as an interpolation.° 

We therefore find Christian interpolations in Josephus at every 
step, from the very beginning of the Second Century. His silence 
concerning the principal personages of the Gospels was simply 
too striking, and had to be altered. 

But even if the statement concerning James were genuine, it 
would at most show that there was a Jesus who was called the 
Christ, z.¢., the Messiah. It could not possibly prove more than 


3 Schiirer, op. cit., pp. 438, 548, 581. 


26 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that. ‘But even if the passage were admitted to be genuine, it 
would be no stronger than a spider’s line, on which critical theol- 
ogy would find it hard to suspend a human form. There were so 
many pseudo-Christs in the time of Josephus, and far into the 
Second Century, that we have no more than a summary mention 
of them. There was a Judas of Galilee, a Theudas, an unnamed 
Egyptian, a Samaritan, and a Bar Kochba. There may very well 
have been a Jesus among them. Jesus was a very familiar name 
among the Jews—Joschua, Josua, the Savior.” ¢ 

The second passage in Josephus informs us at most that among 
the agitators then operating in Palestine as Messiahs, as the 
Lord’s anointed, there was one called Jesus. The passage tells 
us absolutely nothing concerning his life and work. 

The next mention of Jesus in a non-Christian writer is to be 
found in the Annals of the Roman historian, Tacitus, which were 
composed about the year 100 A.D. In the Fifteenth Book, the 
burning of Rome under Nero is described, and we read in 
Chapter xliv: 

“In order to counteract the report (which laid the blame for 
this conflagration on Nero) he accused persons who were called 
Christians by the people, and who were hated for their misdeeds, 
of the guilt, and visited the most excruciating penalties upon 
them. He from whom they had taken their name, Christ, had 
been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius 
Pilate; but though this superstition was thus for a moment put 
down, it arose again not only in Judea, the original home of this 
plague (mali), but even in Rome itself, in which city every out- 
rage and every shame (atrocia aut pudenda) finds a home and 
wide dissemination. First a few were seized who confessed, and 
then on their denunciation a great number of others, who were 
not, however, accused of the crime of incendiarism, but of that 
of hating humanity. Their execution was made a public amuse- 
ment; they were covered with the skins of wild beasts and then 
torn by dogs or crucified, or prepared for the pyre, and then 


4 Albert Kalthoff, The Rise of Christianity, translated by Joseph McCabe, 
London, 1907, pp. 20, 21. 


THE PAGAN SOURCES 27 


burned as soon as night came, to illuminate the city. For this 
spectacle Nero lent his gardens, and he even arranged circus 
games in which he mingled with the people in the costume of a 
charioteer, or mounted a racing chariot. Although these men 
were criminals deserving of the severest punishment, there was 
some public sympathy for them, as it seemed they were being 
sacrificed not to the general weal, but to the cruelty of a single 
man.” 

This testimony surely is not a forgery made by Christians in 
favor of Christians. To be sure, its truthfulness has been 
attacked, as Dio Cassius knows nothing of a persecution of the 
Christians under Nero. However, Dio Cassius lived a century 
later than Tacitus. Suetonius, who wrote not long after Tacitus, 
reports in his biography a persecution of Christians, “people who 
have embraced a new and evil superstition.” (Chapter xvi.) 

But of Jesus, Suetonius tells us nothing at all, and Tacitus does 
not even hand down his name. Christ, the Greek word for ‘the 
anointed’, is nothing more than the Greek translation of the 
Hebrew word “Messiah”. Concerning Christ’s activities and the 
content of his teachings Tacitus has nothing to say. 

And that is all that non-Christian sources in the First Century 
of our era tell us about Jesus. 


II. THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 


But do not the Christian sources flow all the more plentifully? 
Have we not in the Gospels the most minute narrations of the 
teaching and influence of Jesus? 

There is no doubt that they are minute. But their plausibility 
is quite a different matter. The example of the forgery in 
Josephus has already made us acquainted with a characteristic 
trait of the earlier Christian writing of history, namely, its com- 
plete indifference to truth. These writers were concerned not with 
the truth, but with making their point, and they were not at all 
delicate in the choice of their means. 

To be quite just, we must admit that in this respect they were 
not different from their times. ‘The Jewish religious literature 
was in no way better, and the “pagan” mystical movements pre- 
ceding and following the opening of the Christian era were guilty 
of the same offense. The gullibility of the public, the desire to 
create an effect, as well as a lack of confidence in their own 
abilities, the need of clinging to superhuman authorities, the lack 
of a sense of reality, qualities whose causes we shall examine later, 
were then vitiating the whole body of literature, especially where 
it departed from traditional lines. We shall find many proofs of 
this in Christian and Jewish literature. But the fact is that the 
mystical philosophers also were inclined in this direction—to be 
sure, they were closely related with Christianity—as shown, for 
example, by the Neo-Pythagoreans, a sect which arose in the cen- 
tury preceding the birth of Christ. Their doctrine, a mixture of 
Platonism and Stoicism, rich in the faith in revelations, hungry 
for miracles, pretended to be the teaching of the ancient philos- 
opher Pythagoras, who lived in the Sixth Century B.c., and of 
whom very little was known. It thus became all the easier to 
attribute everything to him that needed the authority of a great 


name. 
28 


THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 29 


“The Neo-Pythagoreans wished to be considered as true pupils 
of the ancient Samite philosopher: to make it possible for them 
to represent their teachings as genuinely Pythagorean, they under- 
took those countless literary misrepresentations which without 
hesitation attributed everything, regardless of its newness, or of 
how well known its Platonic or Aristotelean origin might be, to 
Pythagoras or to Archytas.” ° 

Quite similar is the case with primitive Christian literature, 
which therefore is in a state of confusion that has required the 
diligent work of some of the most brilliant minds of the past 
century for its tidying up, without the achievement of any very 
remarkable results. 

Let us point out in a single case how great is the confusion 
resulting from the mingling of the most varied conceptions of 
the origin of primitive Christian writings. The case in point is 
the Revelation of Saint John, a particularly hard nut to crack. 
Pfleiderer has the following to say on this subject in his book 
Primitive Christianity, Its Writings and Teachings: 

“The Book of Daniel was the earliest of these apocalypses, 
and set the pattern for the whole series. When a key to the 
interpretation of the visions of Daniel had been sought in the 
events of the Jewish war in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
it was rightly assumed that the Johannine Apocalypse was to be 
explained from the circumstances of its own time. Accordingly, 
when the mystical number 666 in Chapter xiii, verse 18, was 
interpreted almost simultaneously by several scholars (Benary, 
Hitzig, and Reuss) from the numerical value of the Hebrew let- 
ters, aS meaning the Emperor Nero, the conclusion was drawn 
from a comparison of Chapters xiii and xvii that the Apocalypse 
originated soon after the death of Nero in the year 68. This long 
remained the prevailing view, especially in the earlier Tiibingen 
School, which, on the presupposition, to which it still held firmly, 
of the composition of the book by the Apostle John, supposed 
that the key to the whole book was to be found in the party- 
conflict between Judaisers and adherents of Paul—an interpreta- 
tion which could not be carried through in detail without 

5 Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, Part iii, Sec. ii, Leipzig, 1868, p. 96. 


30 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


great arbitrariness (especially conspicuous in Volkmar). A 
new impulse towards the more thorough investigation of the prob- 
lem was given in 1882 by a pupil of Weizsdcker, Daniel Volter, 
who formulated the hypothesis of a repeated revision and exten- 
sion of a primary document by various authors between 66 and 
170 (fixing, later, 140 as the lower limit). The method of docu- 
mentary criticism here applied underwent in the next fifteen years 
the most manifold variations. Vischer assumed a Jewish docu- 
ment as the basis, which had been worked over by a Christian 
editor; Sabatier and Schon, on the other hand, assumed an orig- 
inal Christian document into which Jewish materials had been in- 
terpolated; Weyland distinguished two Jewish sources, dating 
from the times of Nero and Titus, and a Christian editor of the 
time of Trajan; Spitta distinguished a Christian primary docu- 
ment of the year 60 a.D., two Jewish sources of 63 B.c. and 
40 A.D., and a Christian redactor of the time of Trajan; Schmidt, 
three Jewish sources and two Christian redactors; Volter (in a 
second work in 1893), an original apocalypse of the year 62, and 
four revisions under Titus, Domitian, Trajan, and Hadrian. The 
consequence of all these mutually opposed and more or less com- 
plicated hypotheses was, finally, that ‘the uninitiated received the 
impression that nothing is certain and nothing impossible in the 
field of New Testament criticism’ (Jiillicher, /ntrod., p. 287).” ° 

But Pfleiderer nevertheless believes that the “diligent investi- 
gations of the last two centuries’’ have yielded “a definite result”, 
yet he hardly dares state this in so many words, but says it 
“seems”? so to him. Reasonably sure conclusions as to primitive 
Christian literature have almost without exception been attained 
only in a negative way, in the ascertaining of that which is cer- 
tainly forged. 

It is certain that but a small minority of the primitive Chris- 
tian writings really were written by the authors to whom they 
are attributed, that for the most part they originated much later 
than the dates commonly assigned, and that their original text 
has in many cases been outrageously distorted by later revisions 


6 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, Its Writings and Teachings in Their 
Historical Connections, London and New York, 1906-1911, vol. iii, pp. 401, 402. 


THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 31 


and additions. Finally, it is certain that none of the Gospels or 
other primitive Christian works was written by a contemporary 
of Jesus. 

The so-called Gospel of Saint Mark is now considered the oldest 
of the Gospels; it surely was not written before the destruction 
of Jerusalem, which the author represents as prophesied by Jesus, 
and which, in other words, must already have been accomplished 
when the Gospel was written. It, therefore, was probably written 
not less than half a century after the time assigned as that of 
Jesus’ death. What it has to tell is therefore the product of an 
evolution of legend during half a century. 

After Mark comes Luke, then the so-called Matthew, and 
finally John, in the middle of the Second Century, and at least a 
century after the birth of Christ. The further we advance in 
time, the more miraculous do these Gospels become. To be sure, 
miracles already occur in Saint Mark, but they are quite innocent 
as compared with the later ones. Thus, in the case of the awaken- 
ings from the dead, Mark has Jesus summoned to the bedside of 
Jairus’ daughter, who is at the point of death. All believe she is 
already dead, but Jesus says: “The damsel is not dead but 
sleepeth,” and lays his hand upon her, and she arises (Mark, 
Chapter v). 

In Luke, we have in addition the awakening to life of the youth 
of Nain. He has been dead long enough to be on his way to the 
cemetery when Jesus meets him; the latter causes him to arise 
from his bier (Luke, Chapter vii). 

For Saint John, these items are not strong enough. In his 
Eleventh Chapter he records the awakening of Lazarus, who “has 
been dead four days”, and “by this time stinketh”’. John thus 
beats the record. 

But the Evangelists were extremely ignorant men, their ideas 
on many subjects concerning which they wrote being quite er- 
roneous. Thus Luke has Joseph travel with Mary from Nazareth 
to Bethlehem on the occasion of a Roman imperial census, with 
the result that Jesus is born in Bethlehem. But no such census 
was taken under Augustus. Furthermore, Judea did not become 
a Roman Province until after the date assigned to the birth of 


32 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christ. In the year 7 A.D. a census really was taken, but the 
census gatherers went to the habitations of the population. It 
was not at all necessary to go to Bethlehem.’ 

We shall have occasion to come back to this point. Further- 
more, the court procedure at the trial of Jesus before Pontius 
Pilate is not in accordance with either Jewish or Roman law. 
Even in cases therefore, where the Evangelists are not relating 
miracles, they often present untrue and impossible situations. 

And the concoction thus brewed into a “Gospel” suffered many 
more changes at the hands of later “editors” and copyists for 
the edification of the faithful. : 

For example, the best manuscripts of Mark end with Chapter 
xvi, verse 8, at the point where the women are looking for the 
dead Jesus in the tomb, but find in his place a youth in a long 
white garment; whereupon they left the tomb, and “were afraid”. 

Our traditional versions do not end at this point, but what fol- 
lows was written much later. Yet, the work could not possibly 
have ended with verse 8 as above described. Renan already 
assumed that what had followed had been stricken out in the 
interest of the good cause, because it contained some material 
that might have conflicted with a later interpretation. 

On the other hand, Pfleiderer and others, after an exhaustive 
investigation, arrive at the conclusion “that the gospel of Luke 
originally contained nothing of the supernatural origin of Jesus, 
but that this story arose later, and was interpolated into the text 
by the addition of verses 34 ff.° in Chapter i, and of the words 
‘as was Supposed’ in iii, 23.” ® 

In view of the above, it is not a miracle that already in the 
early part of the Nineteenth Century the Gospels began to be 
considered by many scholars as completely useless as sources for 
the biography of Jesus, and Bruno Bauer even went to the point 

7 On this point, see David Strauss, The Life of Christ, Critically Examined, 
London, 1846, vol. i, pp. 200-208. 

8 Then said Mary unto the Angel, How shall this be since I know not a man? 
And the Angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon 
thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, etc. 

9 “Being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph.” The passage from Pfleiderer 


is taken from his Primitive Christianity, London and New York, 1906-1911, vol. 
ii, p. 103. 


THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 33 


of absolutely denying the historical reality of Jesus. It is natural 
that the theologians should nevertheless be unable to give up the 
Gospels, and that even the most liberal of them should make every 
effort to maintain their authority. What would be left of Chris- 
tianity if the personality of Christ had to be relinquished? But 
in order to save the latter, they are obliged to resort to the most 
ingenious contortions and combinations. 

Thus Harnack, in his lectures on the essentials of Christianity 
(1900), declared that David Friedrich Strauss may have thought 
that he was knocking the historical reliability of the Gospels into 
a cocked hat, but the historical and critical work of two gen- 
erations had nevertheless succeeded in again setting up this reality 
to a great extent. To be sure, the Gospels are not historical 
works, not being written in order to present facts as they hap- 
pened, but being intended as edifying documents. “Yet they are 
not useless as historical sources, especially since their purpose 
is not one that was imposed from without, but in many ways 
coincides with the intention of Jesus.” (Page 14.) 

But what can we know about the intentions of Jesus, aside 
from what the Gospels tell us! Harnack’s whole reasoning in 
support of the plausibility of the Gospels as sources for the life 
of Jesus merely proves how impossible it is to present any sure 
and decisive evidence in this direction. 

Later in his treatise, Harnack himself is forced to admit that 
everything reported by the Gospels concerning the first thirty 
years of Jesus’ life is unhistorical, as well as all the incidents of 
later date which can be proved to be impossible or fabricated. 
But he would nevertheless like to preserve the remainder as a 
historical fact. He believes that we still retain ‘“‘a vivid picture of 
the preaching of Jesus, of the termination of his life, and of the 
impression he made on his disciples”. (Page 20.) 

But how does Harnack know that the preaching of Jesus has 
been so faithfully rendered in the Gospels? ‘Theologians are far 
more skeptical when they approach the subject of the reproduc- 
tion of other sermons in those days. ‘Thus we find Harnack’s 
colleague, Pfleiderer, telling us in his book, Primitive Christianity: 

“To argue about the historicity of this and other speeches in 


34 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Acts is really absurd. One need only consider all the conditions 
which would need to be fulfilled in order to render possible a 
verbally accurate, or even a generally correct, record of such a 
speech. It would need to have been immediately written down 
by someone who was present (indeed, to secure an exact record, 
it would need to have been taken down in shorthand), and these 
notes of the various speeches would need to have been preserved 
by the hearers, who were for the most part Jews or heathen, and 
were either hostile or indifferent towards what was said, for more 
than half a century, and finally collected by the historian from 
the most diverse localities! Anyone who has once made clear to 
himself all these impossibilities, will realize once for all how he 
is to look upon all these speeches, that, in fact, in Acts, just as 
in all secular historians of antiquity, the speeches are free com- 
positions, in which the author makes his heroes speak as he thinks 
that they might have spoken in the circumstances of the 
moment.” *° 

Quite right! But why should not all this reasoning also apply 
to the speeches of Jesus, which lay further behind (in time) the 
authors of the Gospels than the speeches in the Acts of the 
Apostles? Why should the speeches of Jesus in the Gospels be 
anything but speeches which the authors of these records wished 
that Jesus might have delivered? As a matter of fact, the 
speeches as handed down contain numerous contradictions, ex- 
pressions that are at times rebellious, and at other times submis- 
sive, and which can be explained only by the fact that various 
tendencies were present among the Christians, each of which 
adapted the speeches of Christ, in its tradition, to its own needs. 
I shall give another example of the audacious manner in which 
the Evangelists proceeded in these matters. Compare the Sermon 
on the Mount as reported by Luke with the later record in 
Matthew. In Luke it is still a glorification of the poor, a con- 
demnation of the rich. In the days of Matthew, many Christians 
no longer liked that kind of thing, and the Gospel of Saint Mat- 
thew, therefore, transforms the poor who shall be blessed into 


10 Primitive Christianity, London and New York, 1906-1911, vol. ii, pp. 234, 
235. 


THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 35 


those who are poor in spirit, while the condemnation of the rich is 
entirely omitted. If this was the manner of treating speeches 
which had already been set down, what reason have we to believe 
that the speeches Jesus is alleged to have delivered a half century 
before their recording are faithfully repeated in the Gospels! In 
the first place, it is absolutely impossible for mere oral tradition 
faithfully to preserve the wording of a speech that was not set 
down at once, over a period of fifty years after its delivery. Any- 
one who, in spite of this obvious fact, sets down speeches trans- 
mitted only by hearsay, indicates by this very act his readiness to 
write down anything that pleases him, or his extreme gullibility in 
believing at its face value everything he has been told. 

On the other hand, it can be proved that many of Jesus’ state- 
ments do not come from him, but were in circulation before his 
day. 

For instance, the Lord’s Prayer is considered as an original 
contribution by Jesus. But Pfleiderer points out that an Aramaic 
Kaddish prayer of great antiquity concludes with the words: 

“Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world 
which He has created after His will. May He erect his Kingdom 
in your lifetime and within the lifetime of the whole house of 
Israel.”’ It is apparent that the first part of the Christian Lord’s 
Prayer is an imitation. 

But if we can place no faith in the speeches of Jesus, in the 
early history of his life, and surely not in his miracles, what is 
there left in the Gospels? 

According to Harnack we still have the influence of Jesus upon 
his disciples, and the story of his Passion. But the Gospels were 
not composed by the disciples of Christ, they do not reflect the 
impression made by this personality, but rather the impression 
made by the narration of the personality of Christ on the members 
of the Christian sect. Even the most powerful impression can 
prove nothing concerning the historical correctness of this narra- 
tion. Even a tale concerning a fictitious person may make the 
most profound impression upon a system of society, provided the 
historical conditions are suitable for the production of such an 
impression. How great was the impression made by Goethe’s 


36 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


novel, The Sorrows of Werther; and yet, although everybody 
knew it was only a novel, Werther had many disciples and suc- 
cessors. 

Among the Jews, particularly in the centuries immediately pre- 
ceding and following the time of Christ, invented personages have 
often exercised a very great influence, whenever the deeds and 
teachings attributed to them corresponded to profound needs 
among the Jewish people. This is shown, for example, by the 
figure of the Prophet Daniel, of whom the Book of Daniel reports 
that he lived under Nebuchadnezzar, Darius and Cyrus, in other 
words, in the Sixth Century B.c., that he produced the greatest 
miracles, and uttered prophecies that later were fulfilled in an 
astonishing manner, the last of them being that great misfortunes 
would befall Judaism, from which it would be redeemed or saved 
by a redeemer, and again raised to its former prestige. This 
Daniel never lived; the book treating of him was not written until 
about the year 165, at the time of the Maccabean insurrection; 
it is therefore hardly a miracle that all the prophecies alleged to 
have been uttered by the prophet are correctly applicable to all 
events preceding the year 165, which convinced the pious reader 
that the final prophecy of such an infallible prophet must also 
be fulfilled without fail. The whole business is an audacious 
invention which nevertheless had the greatest possible effect; the 
belief in the Messiah, the belief in a redeemer that was to come, 
found its strongest support in this prophet; he became the model 
for all later prophecies of the Messiah. But the Book of Daniel 
also shows how unhesitatingly pious people would resort to hum- 
bug in those days whenever they were aiming at producing a 
strong effect. The effect produced by the figure of Jesus there- 
fore is not a proof of its historical reality. 

We therefore have nothing left of what Harnack himself thinks 
he has rescued as the true historical kernel, except the story of 
the Passion of Christ. Yet this story, too, is so interwoven with 
miracles from beginning to end, terminating in the Resurrection 
and Ascension, that it is almost impossible to discover the his- 
torical nucleus in the life of Jesus. We shall have further occasion 


THE CHRISTIAN SOURCES 37 


to become acquainted with the reliability of the story of the 
Passion. 

The case for the rest of primitive Christian literature is no 
better. Everything apparently written by the contemporaries of 
Jesus, for instance, by his disciples, has been recognized as a 
forgery at least in the sense that it is a product of a later age. 

The Epistles also that are attributed to Saint Paul do not in- 
clude a single one whose genuineness has not been disputed; a 
number have been generally recognized by historical criticism as 
not genuine. The most brazen of these forgeries is probably that 
of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. In this imitated letter 
the author who conceals himself under the name of Paul utters 
the following warning: “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or 
be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word, nor by letters as from 
us” (ii, 2), (a forged letter is meant), and finally the forger states: 
“The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token 
in every epistle: so I write.” Of course, it is just these words 
that betrayed the forgery. 

A number of other epistles of Paul perhaps constitute the oldest 
literary products of Christianity, but they mention practically 
nothing about Jesus aside from the fact that he was crucified and 
then rose from the dead. 

What credence we must give to the Resurrection is hardly a 
matter that we need discuss with our readers. Therefore, there 
is practically not a single element in the Christian literature con- 
cerning Jesus that will bear the test of examination. 


III. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE IMAGE OF JESUS 


At best the historical kernel of the primitive Christian reports 
concerning Jesus does not appear to be more than what Tacitus 
tells us: namely, that at the time of Tiberius, a prophet had been 
executed, to whom the sect of the Christians traced their origin. 
What this prophet taught and what was his influence, this is a 
subject on which not the slightest positive information has yet 
been obtained. At any rate, he surely did not attract the attention 
with which he is credited in primitive Christian records, for other- 
wise Josephus would surely have reported something about it, for 
he recounts many things of much less importance. The agitation 
and execution of Jesus at any rate did not arouse the slightest 
interest on the part of his contemporaries. But if Jesus really 
had been an agitator who was worshiped by a sect as its champion 
and leader, surely the importance of his personality would grow 
with the growth of this sect. Now a crown of legends began to 
form about this character, into which pious spirits would weave 
whatever they wished their model to have spoken and done. But 
as Jesus thus came to be regarded more and more as a model for 
the entire sect, the more did each of the numerous contending 
groups, of which the sect had consisted from the start, attempt 
to assign to this personality precisely those ideas to which each 
group was most attached, in order then to be able to invoke this 
person as an authority. Thus the image of Jesus, as depicted in 
legends that were at first merely transmitted from mouth to 
mouth and later set down in writing, became more and more the 
image of a superhuman personality, the incarnation of all the 
ideals developed by the new sect, but it also necessarily became 
more and more full of contradictions, the various traits of the 
image no longer being compatible with each other. 

When the sect had arrived at a fixed organization, had become 
an all-embracing Church, in which a specific tendency had come 


to dominate, one of its first tasks was to outline a fixed canon, 
38 


THE STRUGGLE FOR THE IMAGE OF JESUS 39 


a catalog of all those primitive Christian writings which it recog- 
nized as genuine. Of course only such writings would be so 
recognized as were written from the point of view of this domi- 
nant tendency. All those Gospels and other writings which con- 
tained a picture of Jesus that did not agree with this tendency of 
the Church were rejected as “heretical”, as forged, or at least 
apocryphal, and, being therefore not worthy of confidence, they 
were not disseminated, but even suppressed as far as possible; 
the manuscripts were destroyed, with the result that very few 
remained in existence. The writings admitted to the canon were 
also ‘‘edited’’ in order to introduce the greatest possible uniform- 
ity, but fortunately the editing was so unskillfully done that 
traces of earlier, contradictory accounts still come to light here 
and there, and permit us to surmise the course of the book’s 
history. 

But the Church did not succeed in its object, which was that of 
producing in this way a uniformity of views within the Church; 
this was impossible. The changing social conditions were ever 
producing new differentiations of views and aspirations within 
the Church, and thanks to the contradiction which the image of 
Jesus as recognized by the Church preserved in spite of all the 
editing and omitting that had been done, these various views 
always succeeded in finding in the image such points as would 
serve their purpose. Therefore, the struggle between socially 
opposed forces within the framework of the Christian Church 
became ostensibly a mere struggle concerning the interpretation 
of the words of Jesus, and superficial historians, therefore, are 
simple-minded enough to believe that all the great and often 
bloody conflicts within Christendom, which were fought under 
religious flags, were nothing more than struggles for mere words, 
and therefore a sad indication of the stupidity of the human race. 
But whenever a social mass phenomenon is ascribed to a mere 
stupidity of the men participating, this apparent stupidity in 
reality is merely the stupidity of the observer and critic, who 
evidently has not succeeded in finding his bearings among con- 
ceptions and opinions foreign to him, or in penetrating to the 
material conditions and motives underlying these modes of 


40 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


thought. As a rule the war was waged between very realistic 
interests; when the various Christian sects are disputing over a 
varying interpretation of the words of Christ it is really such 
interests that are operative. 

The rise of the modern mode of thought and the passing away 
of the ecclesiastical mode of thought has of course more and 
more deprived these combats concerning the image of Christ of 
their practical significance, reducing them to mere quibbles on the 
part of theologians, who are paid by the state to keep alive the 
ecclesiastical psychology, and who must make some returns for 
their salaries. 

The modern Bible criticism, applying the historical methods 
of an investigation of sources to the books of the Bible, gave a 
new impulse to the effort to create a likeness of the personality 
of Jesus. This criticism undermined the, certainty of the tradi- 
tional image of Jesus, but, being manipulated chiefly by the hands 
of theologians, it very rarely advanced so far as the view first 
proclaimed by Bruno Bauer, and later by others, particularly 
A. Kalthoff, that it is impossible in view of the present conditions 
of the sources to set up a new image at all. Criticism has again 
and again tried to restore this image, with the same result for- 
merly produced by the Christianity of other centuries: each of 
our theologian friends puts his own ideals, his own spirit, into his 
image of Jesus. The descriptions of Jesus in the Twentieth Cen- 
tury resemble those written in the Second Century in that they 
do not depict what Jesus actually taught, but what the producers 
of these images wish he had taught. 

Kalthoff gives us a very neat account of this transformation 
of the image of Jesus: 

“From the social-theological point of view, the image of Jesus 
is therefore the most highly sublimated religious expression of all 
the social and ethical forces operative in the era in question; and 
the transformations which this Christ-image has constantly suf- 
fered, its extensions and contractions, the weakening of old traits, 
and their reappearance in new colors, afford us the most delicate 
instrument with which to measure the alterations through which 
contemporary life is passing, from the highest points of its spirit- 


THE STRUGGLE FOR THE IMAGE OF JESUS 41 


ual ideals, to the lower depths of its most material phenomena. 
This Christ-image will now show the traits of a Greek philosopher, 
now those of the Roman Caesars, then again those of the feudal 
lord, of the master of the guild, of the tormented peasant vassal, 
and of the free burgher, and all these traits are genuine, all are 
alive until the faculty theologians become possessed with the 
peculiar notion of proving the individual traits of their particular 
day as being the original historical features of the Christ of the 
Gospels. At best, these traits are made to appear historical by 
the fact that the most varied, even the most opposite, forces were 
operative in the nascent and constructive periods of Christian 
society, each one of which forces bears a certain resemblance to 
the forces that are at work today. But the Christ-image of the 
present day seems quite full of contradictions at first glance. It 
still bears to a certain extent the traits of the ancient saint or of 
the Lord of Heaven, but also the entirely modern features of the 
friend of the proletarian, even of the labor leader. But this 
contradiction merely is a reflection of the most fundamental con- 
trasts that animate our modern life.” And in an earlier passage: 
“Most of the representatives of the so-called Modern Theol- 
ogy use their shears when making excerpts according to the 
critical method beloved of David Strauss: they amputate the 
mythical elements in the gospels, and declare the remainder to 
be the historical nucleus. But even the theologians recognize 
that this nucleus has waxed too lean under their operations. .. . 
In the absence of all historical certainty, the name of Jesus has 
therefore become an empty vessel for Protestant Theology, into 
which each theologian may pour his own intellectual equipment. 
One of them will make this Jesus a modern Spinozist; the other, 
a Socialist; while the official professorial theologians will of 
course view Jesus in the religious light of the modern state; in fact 
in recent days they have represented him more and more boldly as 
the religious advocate of all those aspirations that are now claim- 
ing dominance in the greater Prussian, national Theology.” ** 
In view of this state of affairs it is no cause for surprise that 


11 Das Christusproblem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie, 1902, pp. 15, 
17, 80, 81. , 


42 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


temporal historians have felt but a slight inclination to investigate 
the sources of Christianity, if these historians begin with the 
view that Christianity was the work of a single man. If this 
view were correct, it would of course be reasonable to give up 
every effort to determine the origin of Christianity, and to leave 
our theologians in undisputed possession of the field of religious 
fiction. 

But the historian’s attitude becomes quite different if he views 
a world religion not as the product of an individual superman, 
but as a social product. The social conditions at the time when 
Christianity originated are well known. And the social character 
of primitive Christianity can also be determined with some pre- 
cision from a study of its literature. 

The historical value of the Gospels and of the Acts of the 
Apostles is probably not of higher value than that of the Homeric 
poems, or of the Nibelungenlied. These may deal with historical 
personages; but they relate their activities with such poetic license 
that it is impossible to draw from their accounts even the slight- 
est data for a historical description of these persons, not to men- 
tion the fact that they are so interwoven with fabulous elements 
that we shall never be able on the basis of these poems alone to 
state which of their characters are historical and which are in- 
vented. If we had no information concerning Attila but what is 
found in the Nibelungenlied, we should have to say of him as we 
say now of Jesus, that we are not even certain that he ever lived, 
and that he may have been as mythical a personage as Siegfried. 

But such poetic narrations are of incalculable value for the 
study of the social conditions under which they arose, and which 
they faithfully reflect, no matter how many liberties their authors 
may take in their treatment of facts and persons. The extent to 
which the account of the Trojan War and its heroes is based on 
historical fact is enveloped in obscurity, and perhaps will always 
remain so, but we have in the Iliad and the Odyssey two his- 
torical sources of the first rank for a study of the social condi- 
tions of the Heroic Age. 

Poetic works are often far more fmportant for a study of their 
times than the most faithful historical accounts. For the latter 


THE STRUGGLE FOR THE IMAGE OF JESUS 43 


give us only the personal, striking, unusual elements which are 
least permanent in their historic effect; the former on the other 
hand afford us a view of the daily life of the masses, which is con- 
stant and permanent in its effect, with a lasting influence on 
society; the historian does not relate these things, because he 
assumes them to be generally known and self-evident. It is for 
this reason that Balzac’s novels are one of the most important 
sources for the social life of France in the first decades of the 
Nineteenth Century. 

Thus, while we may learn from the Gospels, the Acts of the 
Apostles, and the Epistles, nothing definite about the life and 
doctrine of Christ, we may obtain very important information 
concerning the social character, the ideals and aspirations of the 
primitive Christian congregation. When Biblical criticism ex- 
cavates the various deposits that have been gathered in successive 
layers in these writings, it affords us an opportunity to trace the 
development of these congregations to a certain extent at least, 
while the “pagan” and Jewish sources enable us to cast a glance 
at the social forces that were simultaneously at work on primitive 
Christianity. This enables us to recognize and understand the 
latter as a product of its times; such is the basis of all historical 
knowledge. Individual persons may influence society, and the 
delineation of prominent individuals is indispensable for a com- 
plete picture of their times. But when measured by historical 
epochs, their influence is temporary at best, furnishes only the 
surface adornments which, while they may be the first portion of 
the structure that strikes the eye, reveal nothing to us concerning 
its foundation walls. It is the latter that determine the char- 
acter and permanence of the structure. If we can reveal them, 
we have accomplished the most important work in an understand- 
ing of the edifice. 


PART TWO 


SOCIETY UNDER THE ROMAN IMPERIAL 
PERIOD 






ms iN, i 
Me Ga Ne 
MANY EM ' 





real f : : (he ‘ ¥" 
VCVIE Gy Peaeee pare! Teel hon ut neu) 


Mien 












i 







a 


ek 


iat 


~— 


I, THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 


a. Property in Land 


THOosE who would understand the opinions which are charac- 
teristic of a particular epoch and which distinguish them from 
the ideas of other epochs, must first of all study the needs and 
problems peculiar to the period. These are at bottom the out- 
growth of the particular mode of production in the period, of 
the manner in which the society of the time maintained its life. 

Let us first attempt to trace from its very beginnings the eco- 
nomic system on which the society of the Roman Empire was 
based. Only in this way can we understand its peculiar char- 
acteristics at the moment of the conclusion of this evolution, 
namely, under the Imperial Period, and the peculiar tendencies 
which it showed at that time. 

The basis of economic production in the countries of which 
the Roman Empire was constructed was agriculture, besides 
which artisan industry and trade in commodities were practiced 
on a much smaller scale. Production for direct consumption. was 
the general rule. The production of commodities, in other words, 
production for sale, was still in its infancy. Artisans and mer- 
chants in many cases had farms of their own, and these were 
closely bound up with the domestic life; their chief task was 
production for the household. Agriculture furnished the food- 
stuffs for the kitchen and in addition such raw materials as flax, 
wool, leather, timber, from which the members of the family 
made their own clothes, utensils and tools. All that could be 
sold was the surplus—when there was any—over and above the 
household needs. 

This mode of production demands that there be private prop- 
erty in most of the means of production, in all that involves human 
labor, including therefore the farm land, but not private prop- 
erty in forests and pastures, which may remain a common hold- 

47 


48 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ing; property in domestic animals, but not in game; finally, it 
involves private property in tools and raw materials as well as 
the products resulting from their use. 

But with private property we already have the possibility of 
economic inequality. Fortunate accidents may favor and en- 
rich one establishment while they injure and impoverish another. 
Establishments of the former variety will grow; their land and 
cattle will increase; but this condition at once produces a special 
labor question for the larger establishments, namely, the question 
of where to get the additional labor that is required for the 
proper care of the greater herds of cattle and the proper tilling of 
the more extensive fields. 

Class differences and class oppositions make their appearance. 
The more productive agricultural labor becomes, the greater is 
the surplus it furnishes over the needs of the farmer himself. 
This surplus serves on the one hand to feed artisans, who are 
assigned to the production of certain useful articles, such as 
smiths and potters; on the other hand the surplus may be used 
in exchange for useful articles or raw materials that cannot be 
produced in the region itself, nature not furnishing them, or the 
necessary Skill being absent. Such products are brought by mer- 
chants from other regions. The rise of the artisan and of trade 
tends to increase the inequalities in landed property. In addi- 
tion to the inequality between large and small holdings we now 
have also the greater proximity or distance from the points in 
which workers and merchants congregate in order to exchange 
their commodities for the surplus produced by the peasants. The 
poorer the means of traffic, the more difficult does it become to 
bring products to market, and the greater is the advantage of him 
who lives close to the market. 

We therefore observe the formation of a class of landed pro- 
prietors from among all those favored by one or more of these 
factors, who obtain a greater surplus than the mass of the peas- 
ants, and who can in exchange secure more products of trade and 
industry, and possess more leisure than the average farmer, con- 
trol more technical resources in labor and in war, receive more 
mental stimulus by living together with others or by frequent 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 49 


relations with artists and merchants, and can widen their mental 
horizon. ‘This class of fortunate landed proprietors now has the 
time, the ability and the means of transacting business exceeding 
the narrow limits of the peasant outlook. They have the time 
and energy enabling them to weld together a number of peasant 
communities into a state, as well as to administer and defend the 
state and regulate its relations with neighboring and more dis- 
tant states. 

All these classes, large landed proprietors, merchants, artisans, | 
live on the surplus from agricultural work, to which is soon added 
the surplus from industry. As their functions in society gain in 
importance, the merchants and large landowners acquire more 
and more of such surplus products. Soon the more powerful 
landed proprietors, by virtue of their economic superiority as 
well as their powerful position in the state, are able to deprive 
the mass of peasants and artisans of the surplus resulting from 
their work. They thus obtain wealth far in excess of their peas- 
ant or artisan standards and in turn solidify their social power 
and their ability to seize further surplus products, and gain 
additional wealth. 

Thus there grow up, over the heads of the peasants and arti- 
sans, a number of strata of great exploiters, landed proprietors, 
and merchants, not to mention usurers, of which latter we shall 
have occasion to speak in another connection. The increase of 
their wealth is accompanied by an increased need of extending 
their households, which are still closely bound up with the tilling 
of the soil. He who would have a household economy of his 
own must at this period still control his own agricultural estab- 
lishment, which is most secure where it is on his own land. The 
general ambition is therefore in the direction of property in 
land, even the ambition of artisans, usurers, and merchants. And 
the general desire is to increase one’s property in land, since pro- 
duction for home use is still predominant; increased prosperity, 
a more lavish household, can only be based on an increase in 
farm area. 

The desire to get and to increase the amount of land which 
one owns is the dominant passion of this period, which extends 


50 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


from the epoch at which society, based on agriculture, ceases to 
be nomadic, in other words, from the establishment of peasant 
economy up to the time of the rise of industrial capital. Ancient 
society even at its culminating point, in the Imperial Period, 
never passed beyond this stage, which was not superseded until 
the time of the Reformation. 


b. Domestic Slavery 


But property in land is useless without workers to till it. We 
have already pointed out the peculiar labor problem arising from 
the first formation of large landed estates. Even before the be- 
ginning of historic time, we find that the richer individuals are 
looking for workers who may always be counted upon, in order 
to add them to the household, in addition to the members of the 
family, who are bound to the household by ties of blood. 

Such workers could not at first be had by offering them wages. 
To be sure, we find cases of wage labor very early, but it is always 
an exceptional and temporary phenomenon, for instance, help in 
gathering the crops. The production tools required by an inde- 
pendent establishment were not so extensive that a competent 
family could not acquire them as a rule. And family and com- 
munal ties were still so strong that any accident befalling a family 
and depriving it of its property could usually be counteracted by 
means of assistance from relatives and neighbors. 

While there was but a slight supply of wage workers, there 
was also very little demand for them. For the household and 
its industry were still closely connected. If additional workers 
were needed for the establishment, they had to become members 
of the household, necessarily lacking not only a workshop of 
their own, but also a family life of their own, being entirely 
absorbed by the stranger’s family. Free workers were not avail- 
able under these circumstances. Even during the Middle Ages, 
journeymen consented to accept membership in the family of the 
master only as a temporary stage, as a transition to mastership 
and to the establishment of their own families. At this period 
free men could not be permanently secured by the payment of 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 51 


wages as additional workers in a stranger’s family. Only a com- 
pulsory detention could obtain the required additional workers 
for the large agricultural establishments. This purpose was 
served by slavery. Under slavery the stranger had no rights. 
And in view of the small size of the community in those days, the 
conception of the “stranger” was all-embracing. In war, not 
only the captured warriors, but very often the entire population 
of the conquered country were enslaved and either divided among 
the victors or sold. But there were also means of obtaining 
slaves in peace times, particularly through maritime traffic, 
which was frequently associated with piracy in its early stages, 
one of the most desired booties being capable and handsome 
humans, who were captured on coast’ raids when found defense- 
less on the shores. In addition, the posterity of male and female 
slaves also passed into slavery. 

The status of the slaves was at first not very bad, and they 
sometimes took their lot lightly. Being members of a wealthy 
household, often engaged in tasks contributing to comfort or 
luxury, they were not notably overworked. If their work was of 
a productive nature, it was often performed—on the big farms— 
with the aid of the master, and involved only production for 
family consumption, necessarily limited. The lot of the slave 
was determined by the character of his master, and by the wealth 
of the family to which he belonged. The masters had consid- 
erable interest in improving the status of the slaves, because it 
involved improvement in their own status. Besides, by con- 
stant personal contact with the master, the slave stood in a more 
or less human relation with the latter, and might, if he possessed 
wit and brightness, even become indispensable to the master, a 
friend as it were. Passages can be found in the ancient poets to 
show how free the slaves were with their masters and with what 
affection both sides often regarded each other. Quite frequently 
the slaves would be dismissed with a handsome present for faith- 
ful services and others would save enough to buy their freedom. 
But not a few preferred slavery to freedom, that is, they pre- 
ferred life as members of a wealthy family to the lonely, meager, 
and uncertain existence away from such a family. 


U. OF ILL. LIB. 


52 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


“Tt must not be supposed,” says Jentsch, “that the legal status 
of the slave, so repulsive to us, was taken seriously in private life 
and that the slave was neither considered nor treated as a human 
being; up to the end of the First Punic War the lot of the slave 
was not a sad one. What has been said of the legal power of 
the head of the family over his wife and children applies also 
to his rights over the slaves; although legally unlimited, they 
were modified by religion, custom, reason, sentiment, and self- 
interest, and the man who was considered before the law as a 
commodity, subject without defense to purchase and to his mas- 
ter’s caprice, was esteemed as a faithful fellow-worker in the 
fields and as a companion in the home, with whom one could chat 
pleasantly by the hearth after working together with him out of 
doors.” * 

This comradely relation was found not only on the peasant 
farm; even princes still did more or less work in the Heroic Age. 
In the Odyssey, the daughter of King Alkinoos does the washing, 
together with her female slaves; Prince Odysseus does not chal- 
lenge his rival to a duel, but to a competition in mowing and 
plowing, and on his return to his homeland he finds his father 
working in the garden with a shovel. Besides, Odysseus and his 
son Telemachus are the object of the affectionate regard of their 
slave, the “‘divine swineherd” Eumezus, who is firmly convinced 
that his master would have given him his liberty long ago, and 
also a farm and a wife, if only his master had returned. 

This form of slavery was one of the mildest forms of ex- 
ploitation known to us. But it changed its character when it 
became a means of making money, particularly when the large 
estates, having been separated from the household of the master, 
began to employ many workers. 


c. Slavery in the Production of Commodities 


Probably the first such properties were mines. The mining 
and working of minerals, particularly metallic ores, is ill suited 


* Karl Jentsch, Drei Spaziergange eines Laien ins klassische Altertwm, 1900. 
Third Spasiergang, Der Roémerstaat, p. 237. Compare also the Second 
Spaziergang in the same book: Die Sklaverei bei den antiken Dichtern. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 53 


by its very nature for production for household use only. As 
soon as such industries attain even the smallest degree of devel- 
opment, they yield a great surplus beyond domestic needs; be- 
sides, they can attain a certain perfection only by regularly em- 
ploying the labor of large bodies of workers, because the worker 
can in no other way acquire the necessary skill and experience, 
or make the necessary engineering structures profitable. Even 
in the Stone Age we already find great centers in which the manu- 
facture of stone implements was carried on proficiently and on a 
large scale, being then distributed by barter from group to group 
or from clan to clan. These mineral products seem to have been 
the first commercial commodities. They probably are the very 
first to have been produced with the intention of serving for 
barter. 

As soon as a mining operation had developed over a deposit 
of valuable minerals, and had passed beyond the limits of the 
most primitive surface mining, it required larger and larger bod- 
ies of workers. The need for such workers might easily exceed 
the number of free workers that could be recruited from the 
ranks of the clan owning the mine. Wage labor could not per- 
manently supply numerous bands of workers; only compulsory 
labor by slaves or condemned criminals could assure the neces- 
sary number of workers. 

But these slaves were no longer producing only utensils for 
the limited personal requirements of their master; they worked 
so that he might make money. They were not working for his 
consumption of sulphur, iron or copper, gold or silver, in his own 
household, but for his sale of the mined products, to put him in 
possession of money, that commodity that can purchase every- 
thing, all enjoyments, all power, and of which one can never have 
too much. As much labor as possible was ground out of the 
workers in the mines, for, the more they worked, the more money 
their owner made. And they were fed and clothed as poorly as 
possible, for their food and clothing had to be bought, had to be 
paid for in money; the slaves in the mine could not produce them. 
While the owner of a wealthy agricultural establishment could do 
nothing else with his surplus of articles for consumption than 


34 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


lavish them on his slaves and guest-friends, the case with com- 
modity production was different; the less the slaves consumed, 
the greater was the gain in money from the industry. Their 
situation became worse and worse as the industry became larger, 
thus removing them more and more from the master’s household, 
housing them in special barracks whose dismal bareness con- 
trasted sharply with the luxury of the former household. Fur- 
thermore, all personal contact between master and slave ceased, 
not only because the workshop was now separated from his house- 
hold, but also because of the great number of workers. Thus it 
is reported in Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War that 
Hipponikos had six hundred slaves working in the Thracian mines 
and Nikias one thousand. The slave’s position now became a 
terrible scourge for him; while the free wage worker might after 
all make a certain selection among his masters and might at least 
under certain favorable circumstances exercise a certain pres- 
sure on his master by refusing to work, and thus resist the worst 
encroachments, the slave who ran away from his master or re- 
fused to work for him might be slain on sight. 

There was only one reason for sparing the slave, the reason 
for which one spares cattle: the cost of buying a new one. The 
wage worker costs nothing, and if the work destroys him another 
will take his place, but the slave had to be bought; if he died 
before his time, his master was the loser. But this reason had 
less and less influence when slaves were cheap, and there were 
times when the price of a slave was extremely low, when constant 
foreign and domestic wars threw numerous captives on the 
market. 

Thus in the third war of the Romans against Macedonia, sev- 
enty cities were plundered in Epirus, in the year 169 B.c., on @ 
single day, 150,000 of their inhabitants being sold as slaves. 

According to Boéckh, the usual price of a slave in Athens was 
100-200 drachmas ($20-$40). Xenophon reports that the price 
varied between fifty and a thousand drachmas. Appianus says 
that in the Pontus on one occasion prisoners of war were knocked 
down at four drachmas (a trifle over 75 cents) each. When 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 55 


Joseph’s brothers sold him to Egypt he brought in only twenty 
shekels ($4.50). 

A good riding horse was much more expensive than a slave, 
as its price at the time of Aristophanes was about twelve minae, 
or almost $250. 

But the very wars which furnished cheap slaves also ruined 
many peasants, since the peasant militia then constituted the 
kernel of the armies. While the peasant was waging war his 
farm would go to pieces for lack of workers. The ruined peas- 
ants had no other resource than to take to banditry, unless they 
had the opportunity to go to a neighboring city and eke out their 
livelihood as artisans or as part of the Lumpenproletariat.2 Many 
crimes and criminals were thus produced that had not been 
known in earlier days, and the pursuit of these criminals fur- 
nished new slaves, for jails were as yet unknown, being a product 
of the capitalist mode of production. Persons not crucified were 
condemned to compulsory labor. 

Over certain periods there were therefore available extremely 
cheap hosts of slaves whose status was very wretched. The Span- 
ish silver mines, among the most productive of antiquity, are an 
excellent illustration. ‘‘At first,’”’ Diodorus says of these mines, 
“ordinary private individuals undertook the mining and gained 
great wealth thereby, since the silver ore was not deep in the 
ground and was present in great abundance. Later, when the 
Romans had become masters of Iberia (Spain), a large number 
of Italians were attracted to the mines, gaining great wealth 
through their avarice, for they bought a number of slaves and 
handed them over to the mine supervisor. . . . The slaves who 
have to work in these mines make incredible sums for their mas- 
ters; but many of them, working far below the ground, exerting 
their bodies day and night in the shafts, die from overwork. For 
they have no recreation or recess in their work, but are driven 
on by the whips of their supervisors, to bear the worst discom- 


2 Herzfeld, Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Altertums, 1894, p. 193. 

3 This German word, now frequently used in economic works written in 
English, signifies that portion of the proletariat whose income, though of pro- 
letarian dimensions, is not the result of actual labor, but of charity or extor- 
tion.— TRANSLATOR. 


56 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


forts and work themselves to death. A few who possess sufficient 
physical strength and a patient equanimity, are able to bear this 
treatment, but this only prolongs their misery, the immensity 
of which makes death appear more desirable to them than life.’ * 

While patriarchal domestic slavery is perhaps the mildest form 
of exploitation, slavery in the service of greed is surely the most 
abominable. The technical methods of mining under the given 
circumstances made it necessary to employ a large-scale produc- 
tion with slaves, in the mines. But in the course of time a demand 
arose for the production of commodities on a large scale by slaves 
in other branches of industry. There were communities that 
were far superior to their neighbors in military power, and these 
found war so profitable that they never tired of it. Warfare 
furnished an inexhaustible supply of new slaves which it was 
sought to put to profitable work. But these communities were 
always connected with great cities. When such a city, because 
of its favorable situation, became a great trading place, commerce 
alone would attract many persons, and if the city was generous 
in its grants of citizenship to strangers, it soon became richer 
in population, and also in means, than the other neighboring 
communities which it subjected. Plundering and exploiting the 
surrounding country was a further source of increasing wealth 
for the city and its inhabitants. Such wealth would stimulate 
the need for great building operations, either of a hygienic nature 
—sewers, aqueducts; or of zsthetic and religious nature—tem- 
ples and theaters; or of military nature—encircling walls. Such 
structures could at that time be best produced by great masses 
of slaves. Contractors arose, who bought great numbers of 
slaves and executed various constructions for the state with their 
labor. The large city also furnished an extensive market for 
great masses of foodstuffs. With the low price of slaves, the 
most extensive surplus was produced by agricultural establish- 
ments working on a large scale. To be sure, the technical supe- 

4Diodorus Siculus, Historische Bibliothek, vol. xxxvi, 38. Compare the quota- 


tion from the same work, iii, 38, on the Egyptian gold mines, to which Marx 
refers in his Capital, vol. i, chap. 8, 2, note 43. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 57 


riority of large-scale production in agriculture was at that time 
by no means an accomplished fact. In fact, slavery was less 
productive than the labor of free peasants, but the slave, since 
his labor power did not need to be spared and he could be driven 
to death without regret, produced a greater surplus over and 
above the cost of his maintenance than did the peasant, who had 
then not yet learned to appreciate the blessings of overwork and 
was accustomed to a life of ease. In addition, slave labor had 
the advantage, precisely in such communities, that the slave was 
freed from military service, while the peasant might at any 
moment be taken from the plow by the duty of defending his 
country. Thus, in the economic territory of such large and war- 
like cities, large-scale agricultural production by slaves began. 
It was brought to a high level by the Carthaginians; the Romans 
became acquainted with it in the wars with Carthage, and when 
they annexed large territories from their great rival, they also 
annexed the practice of large-scale agricultural production, which 
they further developed and expanded. 

Finally, in large cities where there were many slaves practicing 
the same trade, and also a good market for their products, it was 
a simple matter to buy up a large number of such slaves and put 
them to work in a common factory, so that they might produce 
for the market as wage workers do today. But such slave manu- 
factures attained importance only in the Hellenic world, not in 
the Roman. Everywhere, however, a special kind of slave in- 
dustry developed together with large-scale agricultural produc- 
tion, regardless of whether such production was a mere plantation 
furnishing a certain species such as grain by factory methods for 
the market, or whether it chiefly served the home consumption 
by the family, by the household, and therefore had to furnish 
the very varied products which the latter required. 

Agricultural work is peculiar in that it demands a large num- 
ber of workers only at certain seasons of the year, while at other 
seasons—particularly in winter—it requires but a few. This is 
a problem even for modern large-scale agricultural establish- 
ments; it was a harder problem under the system of slave labor. 


58 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


For the wage worker can be dismissed when not needed and re- 
employed when needed. How he gets along in the interval is his 
own business. On the other hand, the large-scale farmer could 
not sell his slaves every autumn and buy new ones in the spring. 
He would have found such a practice very expensive, for in the 
fall they would have been worth nothing and in the spring a 
great deal. He therefore was obliged to try to keep them busy 
during periods in which there was no farming. The traditions 
of a combined agriculture and industry were still strong, and 
the farmer still worked his own flax, wool, leather, timber, and 
other products of his land into clothes and implements. There- 
fore the slaves of large-scale agricultural enterprises were em- 
ployed, during the time when farming was idle, at industrial 
tasks such as weaving, and the manufacture and working of 
leather, the making of wagons and plows, the production of pot- 
tery of all kinds. But, when the production of such commodities 
had advanced to a high level, they manufactured not only for their 
own establishment and household, but also for the market. 

When slaves were cheap, their industrial products could also 
be made cheap, as the latter required no outlay in money. The 
estate, the latifundium, furnished the food and raw materials 
for the workers, and for the most part even the tools. And as 
the slaves had to be kept alive in any case during the period in 
which they were not needed for farming work, all the industrial 
products which they produced beyond the needs of their own 
establishment and household constituted a surplus that might 
allow a profit even at low prices. 

It is not to be marveled at that a free and healthy artisan 
class could not develop in the face of this competition from slave 
labor. In the ancient world, particularly the Roman world, the 
artisans remained wretched fellows, working mostly alone with- 
out apprentices, and usually in the customer’s house, with mate- 
rials furnished by the latter. A healthy artisan class, such as 
later developed in the Middle Ages, is entirely absent. The 
guilds remained weak, the artisans constantly at the mercy of 
their customers, most of whom were large landed proprietors, 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 59 


as whose clients they often led a very parasitic existence on the 
threshold of the Lumpenproletariat. 

But large-scale production with slave labor was only power- 
ful enough to prevent a healthy growth of free industry and a 
development of its technique, which always remained at a low 
level in ancient times, as was natural in view of the artisan’s pov- 
erty; but the artisan’s skill might on occasion become highly 
developed, his tools remaining wretched and primitive. But the 
case in the large-scale enterprises was no different; here also 
slavery had the same inhibitive effect on all technical devel- 
opment, 


d. The Technical Inferiority of the Slave-Holding System 


Large-scale production in agriculture did not yet involve the 
same condition for higher efficiency as in mining. To be sure, the 
increasing production of commodities did bring about a 
division of labor even in agriculture; many farms turned to grain- 
raising, while others took up cattle-breeding, etc. As the large- 
scale establishment developed, it became possible to have it man- 
aged by scientifically trained men with more ability than the 
routine peasant; we therefore actually find in those countries 
that introduced this large-scale agricultural economy, in other 
words among the Carthaginians and later the Romans, a fully 
developed science of agriculture at about the same level as that 
of European agriculture in the Eighteenth Century. But the 
workers were lacking whom this science might have used to 
lift the large-scale establishment beyond the practices of the 
peasant establishment. Even the wage laborer is not as much 
interested or solicitous in his work as the free landed proprietor; 
employing a wage laborer is profitable only in places where the 
large-scale establishment is technically far superior to the smaller 
establishment. But the slave employed in a large-scale estab- 
lishment, no longer living in patriarchal family conditions, is a 
far more unwilling worker, in fact, his efforts are directed chiefly 
to the detriment of his employer. Even in domestic slavery, the 
work of the slave was not considered as productive as that of 
the free proprietor. Already Odysseus says: 


60 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


“Servants, no longer spurred on by the imperious master, 
Negligent at once they become, to do the work that he gives them. 
Fully one half of his virtue the divine providence of Zeus 
Takes from a man as soon as the day of serfdom overtakes him!” 


How much worse was the case with slaves who were daily tor- 
tured to the quick, and whose attitude towards their master was 
one of desperation and hatred! It would have required an im- 
mense superiority on the part of large-scale production over 
small production, for the former to achieve the same results as 
the latter with the same number of workers. But large-scale 
production not only was not superior; it was in many ways in- 
ferior. The slaves, who were themselves maltreated, gave vent 
to all their rage in their treatment of the cattle, which needless to 
say did not thrive. Similarly, it was impossible to allow them to 
handle delicate tools. Marx has already pointed this out. He 
says of “production based on slavery”: 

“This is one of the circumstances that makes production by 
slave labor such a costly process. The laborer here is, to use 
a striking expression of the ancients, distinguishable only as in- 
strumentum vocale, from an animal as instrumentum semivocale, 
and from an implement as instrumentum mutum. But he him- 
self takes care to let both beast and implement feel that he is 
none of them, but isa man. He convinces himself with immense 
satisfaction, that he is a different being, by treating the one un- 
mercifully and damaging the other con amore. Hence the prin- 
ciple, universally applied in this method of production, only to 
employ the rudest and heaviest implements and such as are dif- 
ficult to damage owing to their sheer clumsiness. In the slave- 
states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, down to the date of the 
civil war, plows constructed on old Chinese models, which turned 
up the soil like a hog or a mole, instead of making furrows, were 
alone to be found. . . . In his Sea Board Slave States, Olmsted 
tells us: ‘I am here shown tools that no man in his senses, with 
us, would allow a laborer, for whom he was paying wages, to be 
encumbered with; and the excessive weight and clumsiness of 
which, I would judge, would make work at least ten per cent 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 61 


greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I am as- 
sured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by 
the slaves, anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished 
them with good economy, and that such tools as we constantly 
give our laborers and find our profit in giving them, would not 
last out a day in a Virginia cornfield—much lighter and more 
free from stones though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask 
why mules are so universally substituted for horses on the farm, 
the first reason given, and confessedly the most conclusive one, 
is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always must 
get from negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled 
by them, while mules will bear cudgeling, or lose a meal or two 
now and then, and not be materially injured, and they do not 
take cold or get sick, if neglected or overworked. But I do not 
need to go further than to the window of the room in which I am 
writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would 
ensure the immediate discharge of the driver by almost any 
farmer owning them in the North.’ ”’® 

Unintelligent, sulky, malicious, eager for an occasion to injure 
the hated tormentor, whenever the opportunity served, the slave 
labor of the latifundium produced far less than the peasant farm. 
Pliny, in the First Century of our era, already pointed out how 
fruitful the fields of Italy had been when the farmer had not 
yet scorned to till them himself, and how intractable Mother 
Earth had become when fettered and branded slaves were per- 
mitted to maltreat her. This kind of farming might under certain 
circumstances provide a greater surplus than the peasant farm, 
but it could by no means maintain as many people in prosperity. 
However, so long as the condition of war continued, with which 
Rome was constantly disturbing the entire world that surrounded 
the Mediterranean Sea, the expansion of peasant operation also 
continued, but side by side with it there proceeded the decline 
of the peasant economy oppressed by it, since the wars furnished 
rich booty to the great landed proprietors that were waging them, 
besides new lands and endless numbers of cheap slaves. We 
thus find in the Roman Empire an economic process that bears 


5 Capital, London edition, 1887, vol. i, p. 178, footnote. 


62 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


a striking similarity to that of modern times: decline of petty 
industry, progress of large-scale production, and a still greater 
increase of the great landed estates, the latifundia, which ex- 
propriate the peasant and, whenever they cannot replace him 
by means of plantation methods or other large-scale production, 
at least reduce him from a free proprietor to a dependent tenant. 

Pohlmann, in his History of Ancient Communism and Social- 
ism, quotes among other things “The Lament of the Poor Man 
against the Rich Man” from the pseudo-Quintillian Collection of 
Declamations, in which the growth of the latifundia is excellently 
narrated. It is the lament of an impoverished peasant, who 
wails: 

“T have not always been the neighbor of a rich man. All 
around me there once were on many farms independent farmers, 
equally rich, who tilled their humble lands in neighborly peace. 
How different is it now! The land that once fed all these citi- 
zens is now a Single great plantation, belonging to one rich man. 
His estate has expanded in all directions; the peasant homes 
which it has devoured have been razed to the ground and the 
figures of the ancestral gods destroyed. The former proprietors 
have had to take leave of the patron gods of their ancestral house 
and proceed to foreign parts with their wives and children. A 
great uniformity of work prevails over the wide expanse. Every- 
where wealth incloses me as with a wall. Here is the rich man’s 
garden, there are his fields; here his vineyards, there his forests 
and pastures. I, too, would gladly have departed but I could 
not find a single spot of ground where I should not have had rich 
men as neighbors. For where do we not find the private estates 
of the wealthy? They are no longer satisfied with extending 
their estates until they meet with a natural boundary, as the 
nations do, in the form of a river or a mountain, but they take 
possession of the most remote mountain wastes and forests. And 
nowhere does this expanse encounter any limit, any barrier, 
except when the rich man’s land meets the land of another rich 
man. And another element of the contempt which these rich 
men have for us poor is that they do not even consider it worth 
while to deny their actions if they have been guilty of any viola- 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 63 


tion of our rights.” (Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und 
Soztalismus, vol. ii, pages 582, 583.) 

PohImann considers the above to be a characterization of the 
tendencies “of extreme capitalism in general’. But the simi- 
larity of this evolution with that of modern capitalism and its 
concentration of funded wealth is merely superficial and it is 
absolutely misleading to compare the two. He who studies the 
subject more deeply will rather find a sharp opposition between 
the two developments. First of all, in the fact that the tendency 
to concentration, the effort on the part of larger enterprises to 
displace smaller ones, as well as the drift to increasing dependence 
of the smaller enterprises on the possessors of great wealth is at 
the present day chiefly proceeding in industry, and much less so 
in agriculture, while in ancient times just the opposite was the 
case. Furthermore, the subjection of the smaller enterprises by 
the greater ones proceeds today in the form of competition, which 
enables the greater productivity of the establishment working 
with immense machines and plants to have its full effect. In 
antiquity, this subjection took the form of a weakening of the 
free peasants, oppressed by military service, and of a greater 
cheapness of labor power at the disposal of the possessors of great 
resources of money in the shape of an immense slave supply, and 
finally owing to usury, of which we shall speak later. All of 
which are factors which decreased the productivity of labor in- 
stead of raising it. The necessary conditions were lacking in an- 
tiquity for a development and utilization of machinery. As yet 
the free artisan class had not developed to such a high level as to 
be able to furnish immense quantities of free skilled labor, ready 
to hire themselves out permanently for pay, in great numbers, 
laborers who would have been required for the production of 
machines and their manipulation. Therefore the necessary in- 
centive to thinkers and investigators to invent machines was also 
lacking, since such machines would have remained without prac- 
tical use. Once machines have been invented, however, that are 
capable of successful utilization in production, and as soon as 
numerous free laborers appear, eager for employment in the pro- 
duction and manipulation of these machines, the machine becomes 


64 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


one of the most important weapons in the competition of the 
entrepreneurs among themselves. A constant perfection and an 
increased size of the machine are the result, increasing the pro- 
ductivity of labor, increasing the surplus over the wage paid to 
the laborer, increasing also the necessity of hoarding or accu- 
mulating a portion of this surplus with the object of providing 
new and better machines; and also increasing finally the neces- 
sity of constantly widening the market, since the improved ma- 
chinery continues to deliver more and more products which must 
be gotten rid of. This leads to an uninterrupted increase of 
capital so that the production of means of production assumes 
an increasingly important réle in the capitalist system of pro- 
duction, with the result that the latter, in order to dispose profit- 
ably of the increased articles of consumption created simultane- 
ously with the increased means of production, must seek more 
and more new markets, so that it may be said that in the course 
of a single century, namely the Nineteenth, it conquered the en- 
tire world. 

Quite different was the course of events in antiquity. We have 
seen that the slaves employed in large establishments could be 
given only the coarsest tools, that only the crudest and most 
unintelligent workers could be put to work, and that therefore 
it was only the extreme cheapness of the slave material that 
made the large-scale establishment reasonably profitable. This 
stimulated among the entrepeneurs of the large-scale establish- 
ments a constant tendency toward war, this being the most ef- 
fective means of obtaining cheap slaves, and towards a continual 
expansion of the national boundaries. Beginning with the wars 
against Carthage, this tendency became one of the mightiest 
moving forces of the Roman policy of conquest, which in the 
course of two centuries subjected all the countries surrounding 
the Mediterranean Sea, and in the time of Christ, after having 
put Gaul—which is now France—under the yoke, was preparing 
to subjugate Germany, whose robust population furnished such 
excellent slaves. 

This insatiable and constant tendency to increase the area ex- 
ploited made the ancient large-scale enterprise somewhat similar 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 65 


to that of modern days; but there was nevertheless a great dif- 
ference in the manner in which the surplus products yielded by 
the increasing hosts of slaves were applied. The modern capi- 
talist, as we have seen, must save up his profits to a great extent, 
in order to improve and expand his enterprise, unless he wishes 
to be overtaken and defeated by his competitors. The ancient 
slave-holder felt no such need. The technical basis on which his 
production rested, was not higher, it was rather lower than that 
of the small peasants whom he was forcing out. This technical 
basis was not being constantly revolutionized and broadened, but 
remained always the same. All the surplus products beyond the 
costs once incurred, and the replacement or deterioration of 
tools, cattle and slaves, were at the disposal of the slave-holder 
for his enjoyment, even if he was not a wastrel. To be sure, 
money might be invested in trade and usury or new tracts of 
land, and might thus become a source of increased profit, but 
even this new profit could be put to no other use than that of 
enjoyment. The accumulation of capital for purposes of pro- 
ducing new means of production beyond the given quantity would 
have been ridiculous, for these new means of production could 
not have been put to new application. 

The more the peasants were displaced by the latifundia, the 
greater were the quantities of lands and of slaves that were 
brought together under a single ownership, and the greater became 
the surplus, the treasures which were at the disposal of individual 
persons, and which the latter could put to no other use than 
consume them for their own gratification. While the modern 
capitalist is characterized by his tendency to accumulate capital, 
the aristocratic Roman of the Imperial Period is marked by his 
pursuit of enjoyment: it was in this period that Christianity arose. 
The modern capitalists have accumulated funds that make the 
wealth of the richest citizen of ancient Rome ridiculous in com- 
parison. The Crceesus of the ancient Romans was Narcissus, 
Nero’s freed slave, who had a fortune of over $20,000,000. But 
what are $20,000,000, as compared with the $1,000,000,000 that 
Mr. Rockefeller is sail to own? But the extravagance prac- 


66 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ticed by the American multi-millionaires cannot be compared, 
in spite of all its madness, with the extravagance of their Roman 
predecessors, who served nightingales’ tongues at their banquets 
and dissolved precious pearls in vinegar. 

With the growth of luxury the number of domestic slaves used 
for personal service also increased, all the more when the slave 
material became cheaper. Horace in one of his Satires says that 
the smallest number of slaves a man can hold in order to be tol- 
erably comfortable is ten. In an aristocratic establishment their 
number might run into thousands. While the barbarians were 
put into the mines and on large farms, the more finely trained, 
particularly the Greek slaves, were with the ‘city families’, in 
other words, lived in the town house. Not only cooks, scribes, 
musicians, pedagogues, actors, but even physicians and philoso- 
phers were held as slaves. In contrast with the slaves who served 
to increase the owner’s wealth, these educated slaves for the most 
part had very little labor to perform. The greater number were 
now as great idlers as their masters themselves. But the two 
conditions which had formerly served to contribute to decent 
treatment for the family slave now disappeared: his high price, 
which had made it necessary to spare him, and the relation of 
comradeship with his master, who had worked together with the 
slave. Now, in view of the great wealth of the master and the 
cheapness of the slaves, no one felt the slightest obligation to 
spare the latter. Furthermore, all personal relation with the 
master ceased for the great mass of the domestic slaves; the mas- 
ter hardly knew them. And if master and slave came into per- 
sonal contact, it was not over their work, which was a source of 
mutual respect, but in revels and vices such as are produced by 
idleness and arrogance, and which inspired masters and servants 
with mutual contempt. Idle, often pampered, the slaves of the 
house were nevertheless exposed without defense to every ill- 
humor, every angry outburst, which often assumed dangerous 
proportions for them. The cruel act of Vedius Pollio is well 
known: the slave had broken a crystal vessel, for which offense 
Pollio ordered him to be thrown as food to the murenz, which 
he kept in a pond, as these eels were much esteemed as a delicacy. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 67 


The increase in the number of these domestic slaves meant an 
increase in the number of unproductive elements in society, whose 
hosts were simultaneously being swelled by the growth of the 
Lumpenproletariat, recruited partly from the main body of the 
freed peasants. And this process was going on while at the 
same time the driving out of free labor by slave labor was con- 
siderably decreasing the productivity of labor in many productive 
occupations. 

But the greater the number of members in a household, the 
easier it became for the products to be prepared for the house- 
hold by its own workers, products which the smaller household 
had been obliged to purchase, such as certain garments and uten- 
sils. This led to a renewed development of production for home 
consumption within the family. But this latter form of the fam- 
ily economy of the rich should not be confused with the primitive 
simple family economy, which was based on the almost com- 
plete absence of community production, and which itself pro- 
duced precisely the most important and indispensable articles 
among its needs, purchasing only tools and articles of luxury. 
This second form of production for household consumption 
within the family, as we encounter it at the end of the Roman 
Republic and in the Imperial Period, in the households of the 
wealthy, was based precisely on community production, on the 
production of the mines and latifundia for the market; this 
home production was first and foremost a production of luxuries. 

This new development of production for home consumption 
was a danger to the free artisan, to whom the industrial enter- 
prises of the cities and latifundia, manned by slaves, were already 
doing harm enough. The free artisan class was bound to decrease 
relatively, in other words, the number of free workers could but 
go down as compared with that of the slaves, even in artisan 
work. But in a number of trades the free workers might still be 
increasing in number absolutely, thanks to the increase of ex- 
travagance, which created an increased demand for objects of 
art and of art industries, but also for mere articles of vanity, such 
as cosmetics and pomades. 

He who would judge the prosperity of society by such extrava- 


68 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


gances, who would take the same narrow-minded standpoint as 
that assumed by the Roman Caesars and the great landed pro- 
prietors and their retinue of courtiers, artists, and literati, may 
very well estimate the social conditions of the period of the 
Emperor Augustus as excellent. Boundless wealth was being 
accumulated in Rome for the sole purpose of serving personal 
gratification; pleasure-seeking wealthy wastrels staggered from 
banquet to banquet, scattering with lavish hands the abundance 
which it was impossible for them to consume all for themselves. 
Many artists and scholars received very generous grants of money 
from the mecenates, great structures were put up, the immense 
size and artistic proportions of which are the object of our admira- 
tion to this day; the whole world seemed to be perspiring wealth 
from all its pores—and yet this society was already doomed to 
destruction. 


e. The Economic Decline 


A foreboding of the fact that things were on the downward 
path arose rather early among the ruling classes, shut out as they 
were from all activities, all their work, even that of scholarship 
and of politics, being done by slaves. In Greece, slave labor had 
at first served the purpose of granting great leisure to the masters, 
for the administration of the state, and for meditation concerning 
most of the important problems of life. But the more the surplus 
products increased, which were being united in the hands of 
single individuals by the concentration of landed property, the 
expansion of the latifundia, and the increase in the masses of 
slaves, the greater became the tendency to regard the practice of 
enjoying, of wasting these surpluses, as the most aristocratic 
social functions of the ruling classes, the more they burned with 
the zeal of competition in extravagance, the emulation to outdo 
each other in splendor, luxury, and idleness. In Rome this process 
was accomplished more easily than in Greece, since the latter 
country was somewhat backward in its cultural level when it 
reached this mode of production. The Greek military power had 
expanded chiefly at the expense of barbarian tribes, while in Asia 
Minor and Egypt it had encountered really powerful opposition. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 69 


Their slaves were barbarians from whom the Greeks could learn 
nothing, to whom they could not intrust the administration of 
the state. And the wealth which it was possible to extract from 
the barbarians was comparatively insignificant. The Roman rule 
on the other hand, rapidly spread over the ancient sites of civi- 
lization in the East, going as far as Babylonia (or Seleucia): 
from these newly conquered provinces the Romans not only drew 
immense wealth, but many slaves who were superior to their 
masters in knowledge, and from whom the latter had much to 
learn, and to whom they could afford to intrust the administration 
of the state. The administrators of the state, who formerly had 
been great land-holding aristocrats, were more and more succeeded 
in the Imperial Period by slaves of the imperial house and by 
former slaves of the emperor, freedmen who remained faithful to 
their former masters. 7 

The only functions in society remaining to the owners of the 
latifundia and to their numerous retinue of parasites was that 
of enjoyment. But man becomes unresponsive to a stimulus that 
continues to operate on him for a long period, to pleasure as well 
as to pain, to voluptuous impulses as well as to the fear of death. 
Mere uninterrupted pleasure, unrelieved by labor, resulted at 
first in a constant pursuit of new enjoyments, in which it was 
sought to outdo former experiences, to goad the jaded nerves 
anew, which led to the most unnatural vices, to the most exquisite 
cruelties, and which also raised extravagance to the highest and 
most senseless heights. But there is a limit to everything, and 
once the individual had gotten to the point where he was no 
longer able to increase his pleasures, either through a lack of 
resources, or of strength, or as a consequence of financial or 
physical bankruptcy, he was visited with the most extreme nausea, 
with an aversion to the mere idea of pleasure, even with complete 
disgust with life; all earthly thoughts and images now seemed 
vain—vanitas, vanitatum vanitas. Despair, the desire for death, 
was the result, but also the desire for a new and higher life. So 
deep-rooted in many minds, however, was the aversion to work, 
that even this new ideal life was not conceived as a life of joyous 
labor, but as an absolutely inactive state of bliss, which drew all 


70 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


its pleasure from its complete detachment from all the pains and 
disillusionments of physical needs and physical enjoyments. 

But among the best individuals in the exploiting class there 
arose also a feeling of shame at the fact that their pleasure was 
based on the destruction of numerous free peasants, on the mal- 
treatment of thousands of slaves in the mines and the latifundia. 
Their qualms of conscience also awakened a sense of sympathy 
with the slaves—in peculiar contradiction with the ruthless 
cruelty with which the lives of the slaves were then regarded— 
we need only to refer in passing to the gladiatorial combats. 
Finally the sick conscience also aroused an aversion toward the 
lust for gold, for money, which at that time was already ruling 
the world. 

“We know,” cries Pliny in the Thirty-third Book of his Natural 
History, “that Spartacus (the leader of a slave uprising) forbade 
anyone in his camp to have gold or silver in his possession. How 
far our runaway slaves outshine us in greatness of mind! The 
orator Messala writes that the Triumvir Antonius had made use 
of golden vessels for his lowest bodily needs. . . . Antonius, who 
so degraded gold, making it the lowest thing in nature, would 
have deserved to be declared an outlaw. But only a Spartacus 
could have outlawed him.” 

Down below, under this ruling class, of which a part was wreck- 
ing itself in a mad pursuit of enjoyment, lust for money and 
cruelty, while another part was filled with sympathy for the poor, 
with an aversion for gold and pleasures, even with the desire for 
death, there extended an immense host of toiling slaves, who were 
more wretchedly treated than beasts of burden, recruited from 
the most varied tribes, debased and vulgarized by constant abuse, 
by working in chain gangs under the cracks of the whip, full of 
sullen rage, desire for revenge, and hopelessness, ever ready for 
violent insurrection, but incapable—owing to the backwardness 
of the barbarous elements which constituted the majority of them 
—to overthrow the establishment of the mighty state system and 
set up a new system, although single outstanding spirits among 
them may have pursued such ambitions. The only kind of libera- 
tion that they might succeed in attaining was not by means of 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 7\ 


overthrowing the existing society, but by escaping from that 
society, by flight either into the criminal classes, into banditry, 
whose numbers they were continually swelling, or by escaping 
over the imperial boundary and joining the enemies of the empire. 

Somewhat above these millions of the most wretched of all 
humans was a class of slaves consisting of many hundreds of 
thousands, who often lived in luxury and plenty, and who always 
witnessed and suffered from the most exaggerated and outrageous 
passions, who served as accessories in every conceivable form of 
corruption, becoming either subject to such corruption themselves 
and therefore just as depraved as their masters, or—again resem- 
bling some of their masters, and often earlier in the game than 
the latter, since they had to suffer the evils of the life of pleasure 
far sooner—profoundly disgusted with depravity and mere pleas- 
ure seeking, and full of a longing for a new, purer, higher life. 

And side by side with all these there were also swarms of hun- 
dreds of thousands of freed citizens and freed slaves, also numer- 
ous impoverished remnants of the peasantry, down-and-out ten- 
ants, wretched urban artisans and burden-carriers, as well as, 
finally, the Lumpenproletariat of the large cities, having the energy 
and self-reliance of the free citizen and yet having become eco- 
nomically superfluous in society, homeless, without any sense of 
security, depending absolutely on the crumbs which the great 
lords would throw to them of their own superfluity, moved either 
by generosity, or fear, or by the desire for peace. 

When the Gospel of Saint Matthew represents Jesus as saying of 
himself: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head”’ (viii, 
20), this is merely expressing in the case of Jesus a thought which 
Tiberius Gracchus had expressed 130 years before the birth of 
Christ for the whole proletariat of Rome: “The wild animals of 
Italy have their caves and their lairs in which they may rest, but 
the men who struggle and die for Italy’s greatness possess nothing 
but light and air because they cannot be robbed of these. Home- 
less and shelterless they wander about with their wives and chil- 
dren.” Their misery and the constant insecurity of their existence 
must have enraged them the more with the increasing shameless- 


72 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ness and luxury which the wealth of the great was constantly 
placing before their eyes. There ensued a violent class hatred 
on the part of the poor for the rich, but this class hatred was of 
an entirely different kind from that of the modern proletariat. 

All of present-day society is based on the labor of the pro- 
letarian. He has only to stop working and society quakes in its 
foundations. The ancient proletarian outcast performed no labor 
and even the labor done by the remnants of the free peasants and 
the artisans was not indispensable. Society did not live on the 
proletariat at that time; the proletariat lived on society. The 
proletariat was completely superfluous and might have disap- 
peared entirely without injuring society. On the contrary, the 
disappearance of the proletariat could only have rendered the 
social system more secure. The work of the slaves was the basis 
on which society was built up. 

The oppositions between the capitalist and the proletarian are 
today fought out in the factory, in the workshop. The question 
is: who shall control the products, the owner of the means of 
production, or the owner of the labor power? ‘The struggle in- 
volves the entire system of production; it is a struggle to put a 
higher mode of production in place of that now in force. 

The ancient impoverished proletarian was not concerned with 
this struggle. As a matter of fact, he did not work and did not 
want to work. All he wanted was a share in the enjoyments of 
the rich, a different distribution of pleasures, not of means of pro- 
duction, a plundering of the rich, not an alteration of the mode of 
production. The sufferings of the slaves in the mines and plan- 
tations left him as unmoved as did those of common animals. 

Still less could the peasants and artisans think of attempting 
to install a higher mode of production. These classes do not aspire 
to any such thing even now. Their dream was at best to restore 
the past, but they were so closely related to the Lumpenprole- 
tariat, and the aspirations of the latter were so enticing even to 
them, that they also had no other wish or ambition than did these 
impoverished proletarians: a life without labor, led at the expense 
of the rich; communism by plundering the rich. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 73 


Roman society at the end of the Republic and during the 
Imperial Period, therefore, may present immense social opposi- 
tions, much class hatred and many class struggles, insurrections, 
and civil wars, a boundless longing for a different, better life, and 
the abolition of the existing order of society, but it does not show 
that any effort is being made in the direction of introducing a 
new and higher mode of production.° . 

The moral and intellectual prerequisites for such a movement 
were not present; no class possessed the knowledge, the energy, 
the joy in labor and the unselfishness required for the exerting of 
effective pressure in the direction of a new mode of production; 
and also, the material prerequisites were lacking, without which 
even the idea of such a thing could not arise. 

We have seen above that the slave-holding economy technically 
involved not an advance but a retrogression, that it not only 
effeminized the masters and made them unfit for labor, that it 
not only increased the number of unproductive workers in society, 
but in addition lowered the productivity of the productive work- 
ers and retarded the advances in practical technique—with the 
possible exception of certain luxury trades. Anyone who com- 
pared the new mode of production under the slave-holding econ- 
omy with that of the free peasantry which it displaced and 
oppressed, could not but behold in it a decline, certainly not an 
advance. People began to feel that the old times had been the 
better times, the Golden Age, and that each succeeding epoch was 
relatively a degeneration. The capitalistic era is characterized 
by the notion of an unlimited progress of mankind, owing to 
capitalism’s constant effort to improve its means of production, 
resulting in a tendency to view the past in gloomy colors and to 
see only a roseate future; but in the Roman Imperial Period we 


6 Pohlmann, in his already quoted Geschichte des anttken Kommunismus und 
Sozialismus, very stupidly places the class struggles of the ancient proletarians, 
even those of the debt-ridden agrarians, the renunciation of debts to the land- 
owning class, the plunderings and distributions of land by the disinherited, on 
the same level with Socialism in modern times, in order to prove that the Dic- 
tatorship of the Proletariat cannot under any circumstances have any other 
result than murder, violence, incendiarism, dividing up and revelry. The wis- 
dom of this Erlangen professor is that of the late Eugen Richter, adorned with 
great numbers of Greek quotations, 


74 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


find the opposite view, namely, that of a ceaseless progressive 
deterioration of humanity, and of a constant longing to restore 
the good old days. Whenever social reforms and social ideals in 
the imperial days were at all concerned with an improvement of 
production conditions, they aimed only at a restoration of the 
ancient mode of production, namely, that of a free peasantry, 
and rightly so, for this mode of production was relatively higher. 
Slave labor led into a blind alley. Society would have to be placed 
once more on the basis of peasant operation before it could begin 
a fresh ascent. But Roman civilization was incapable of taking 
even this step, for it had lost the necessary peasants. It was 
necessary for the migration of nations to throw great masses of 
free peasants into the Roman Empire before the remnants of the 
civilization which that empire had created could again be used as 
the basis for a new social evolution. 

Like every mode of production based on mutual hostility, the 
ancient slave-holding economy was digging its own grave. In 
the form which it finally attained in the Roman Empire, this 
economy was based on war. Only ceaseless victorious wars, a 
continued subjection of new nations, and uninterrupted expansion 
of the imperial territory could furnish the immense quantities of 
cheap slave material which it needed. 

But war cannot be waged without soldiers and the best material 
for soldiers was the peasant. Accustomed to uninterrupted hard 
work in the open air, in heat and cold, in the blazing sun and in 
the driving rain, he could best bear the hardships which war lays 
upon the soldier. The impoverished city proletarian, no longer 
accustomed to work, as well as the dexterous artisan, weaver or 
goldsmith or sculptor, were far less suited for such use. The 
disappearance of the free peasants meant the disappearance of 
soldiers for the Roman armies. It became necessary more and 
more to replace the number of soldiers liable to militia service by 
mercenary volunteers, professional soldiers, who were willing to 
serve beyond their military period. Soon these also no longer 
sufficed, unless other than Roman citizens were also accepted. 
Already in the days of Tiberius, the emperor declared in the 
Senate that there was a lack of good soldiers, all sorts of rabble 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 75 


and vagabonds had to be accepted. More and more numerous 
became the barbarian mercenaries in the Roman armies, recruited 
from the subjected provinces; finally the breaches in the army had 
to be filled up by recruited foreigners, enemies of the empire. 
Under Caesar we already find Teutons in the Roman armies. 

With the decreasing opportunity to recruit soldiers for the army 
from among the dominant race, and with the increasing rarity 
and cost of the soldiers, the Roman love of peace necessarily in- 
creased, not because of any change in ethical conceptions, but 
for very material reasons. Rome had to be sparing with its 
soldiers, but also it could no longer afford to extend the imperial 
boundaries; it was glad enough to be able to get a sufficient 
number of soldiers to hold the existing boundaries. It is just 
at the time in which Jesus lived, namely, under Tiberius, that 
the Roman offensive, viewed in the large, comes to a standstill. 
There now begins an effort in the Roman Empire to hold it 
together against the enemies threatening from without. And the 
difficulties of this situation were at this moment beginning to 
become more serious, for the more foreigners, particularly Teu- 
tons, were serving in the armies of Rome, the more did Rome’s 
barbarian neighbors become acquainted with her wealth and her 
mode of warfare, not to mention her weaknesses, and the more 
did they become inspired with the ambition to penetrate into the 
empire, not aS mercenaries and servants, but as conquerors and 
masters. Instead of undertaking more hunts for barbarians, the 
Roman masters soon found themselves obliged to retire before 
the barbarians or to purchase peace from them. ‘Thus, in the 
First Century of our era, the influx of cheap slaves came to an 
abrupt stop. More and more it became necessary to breed slaves. 

But this was a very expensive process. The training of slaves 
was profitable only in the case of domestic slaves of the higher 
types, capable of performing skilled labor. It was impossible to 
continue administering the latifundia by the use of trained slaves. 
The use of slaves in farming was becoming less and less frequent 
and even mining was on the decline, numerous shafts becoming 
unprofitable with the cessation of the supply of slaves captured 
in war, who did not need to be spared. 


76 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


But the downfall of the slave-holding economy did not provide 
a new renascence of the peasantry. The necessary stock of 
numerous peasants, economically solvent, was lacking, and in 
addition, private property in land was an obstruction. The own- 
ers of the latifundia were not willing to give up their ownership, 
but merely lowered the scale of their larger operations. They 
placed a portion of their lands at the disposal of small tenants, 
renting them out to tenants or to coloni, under the condition that 
the latter should devote a portion of their labor power to the mas- 
ter’s farm. Thus there arose a system of farming which even 
later, in the Feudal Period, remained the ambition of the great 
landed proprietors, until capitalism supplanted it with the capi- 
talist lease-hold system. 

The laboring classes from which the coloni’ were recruited 
were partly rural slaves and poverty-stricken peasants, partly 
proletarians, free artisans and slaves from the great cities, no 
longer able to make a living in the latter, since the yields of the 
slave-holding establishments in agriculture and mining were going 
down, with the result that the magnanimity and luxuriousness of 
the rich were suffering a setback. In addition, these laboring 
forces were also swelled by inhabitants of the border provinces 
who were being driven out of their holdings by the advancing 
barbarians and fleeing toward the central provinces of the empire, 
where they found homes as coloni. 

But this new mode of production could not hold back the 
process of economic decay resulting from the lack of a slave 
supply. This new method also was technically backward as com- 
pared with the free peasantry, and was a hindrance to technical 
development. The work which the colonus was obliged to per- 
form on the farm remained a compulsory task, approached with 
the same sullenness and negligence, with the same contempt for 
cattle and tools, as was the case in slave labor. To be sure, the 
colonus did work on a farm of his own, but he was given such a 
small one that he was in no danger of waxing insolent, or getting 
more than a mere livelihood out of it, and besides, the rent, which 
was paid in kind, was made so excessive that the colonus had to 


7 See colonus, in the Standard Dictionary.— TRANSLATOR. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 77 


deliver to his master all that he produced beyond the bare needs 
of life. The wretchedness of the coloni was perhaps comparable 
with that of the petty tenants in Ireland, or perhaps of the peas- 
ants of present-day Italy, where a similar mode of production is 
still in force. 

But the present-day agricultural regions at least have the safety- 
valve of emigration to regions which are industrially prosperous. 
There was no such thing for the coloni in the Roman Empire. 
Industry then served only in a small measure for the production 
of means of production, but was principally devoted to articles of 
consumption and luxury. As the surplus earnings of the posses- 
sors of the latifundia and mines went down, industry in the towns 
went backward and their population rapidly decreased. 

But the population of the provincial regions was also decreas- 
ing. The petty tenants could not support large families, for the 
yield of their farms in normal times was barely enough to keep 
them alive. Crop failures found them without supplies and with- 
out money to purchase that which was lacking. Starvation and 
misery necessarily had a rich harvest; the ranks of the coloni 
were decimated, particularly those of their children. The de- 
creasing population of Ireland within the past century is a parallel 
to the decrease in population of the Roman Empire. 

“Tt is easy to understand that the economic causes which were 
bringing about a decrease in the population of the entire Roman 
Empire necessarily operated most perceptibly in Italy, and more 
at Rome than anywhere else. If the reader asks for figures, let 
him assume that the city of Rome in the time of Augustus had 
attained about 1,000,000 inhabitants, that it remained at about 
the same level during the first century of the Imperial Period, 
and then in the age of the Severi went down about 600,000; after 
this the number continued to decrease rapidly.” ° 

Eduard Meyer, in his excellent work, The Economic Evolution 
in Ancient Times (1895), prints in a supplement the description 
given by Dio Chrysostom (born about 50 A.D.), in his Seventh 
Oration, on the conditions in a small town in Eubcea, the name 


8Ludo M. Hartmann, Geschichte Italiens im Mittelalter, 1897, vol. i, p. 7. 


78 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


of which he does not give. It is a drastic presentation of the 
decrease in the population of the Empire. 

“The entire surrounding district belongs to the town and pays 
tribute to the town. Almost all the land, if not all of it, is owned 
by rich people, who are the proprietors of extensive parcels, 
which are used both for pasture and for tilling. But the land is 
entirely desolate. ‘Almost two-thirds of our land,’ a citizen de- 
clared in the Popular Assembly, ‘lies fallow because we cannot 
work it, and because our population is too small. I myself have 
as many acres as anybody else, not only in the mountains, but 
down in the plains. If I could find anyone who was willing to 
till them, I should not only let him have them without payment, 
but should gladly pay him money into the bargain. . . .’ The 
speaker went on to say that desolation was now at the very gates, 
‘the land is absolutely idle and presents a sad spectacle, almost 
as though it were in the midst of the desert and not right outside 
the gates of the city. But within the walls of the city, most of 
it is used as pasture... . The gymnasium has been transformed 
into a plowed field, so that Hercules and the other statues of gods 
and heroes are hidden by the grain in summer, and the speaker 
who preceded me drives out his cattle every morning to graze in 
front of the town hall and the town offices, with the result that 
strangers who visit us laugh at us or mourn for us.’ 

“Accordingly, we find that many houses in the town itself are 
empty; the population is evidently decreasing. A few purple- 
fishers live down by the Capharic Rocks; otherwise there is not 
a soul to be found far and wide in the whole region. Formerly 
all this territory belonged to a rich citizen ‘who had great herds 
of horses and cattle, many pastures, many fine plowed fields and 
much other property.’”’ Because of his wealth, the emperor 
ordered him killed, his herds were driven away, including the 
cattle which belonged to his herdsman, and since then all his land 
has been lying idle. Only two herdsmen, freemen and citizens 
of the city, have remained here and are now supporting themselves 
on the chase and on a little farming and cattle-holding. . . . 

‘The conditions here depicted by Dio—and throughout Greece 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 79 


things were about the same even in the earliest days of the Im- 
perial Period—are the same conditions that developed in the 
course of the centuries immediately following in Rome and in 
its surroundings, and which have placed their mark on the Cam- 
pagna to this very day. In this district also we find that the 
country towns have disappeared, the land lies barren in every 
direction, and is used only for cattle-raising (also for grape-raising 
along the sides of the hills), and finally Rome itself becomes 
empty of its inhabitants, its houses unoccupied and collapsing, 
and its great public structures in the Forum and on the Capitol 
giving pasture to cattle. The same conditions have begun to 
appear in our century (the Nineteenth) in Ireland, and cannot 
fail to strike any visitor who comes to Dublin or travels through 
the country.” (Op. cit., pp. 67-69.) 

The fertility of the soil was also going down. Stall-feeding 
was as yet little used, and necessarily was little resorted to under 
the slave-holding system, as here it meant bad treatment of the 
cattle. But no stall-feeding meant no manure, and the failure to 
fertilize the soil, or to farm it intensively, meant that it was being 
deprived of the ability to provide further yields. Profitable crops 
could be obtained only from the best soils by this mode of farm- 
ing. But the number of such good lands was constantly decreas- 
ing, with the ever recurring crops, the soil becoming more and 
more exhausted. 

A similar phenomenon was witnessed in America in the course 
of the Nineteenth Century, where in the Southern States, where 
slave-holding was also practiced, the soil was not fertilized and 
therefore rapidly deteriorated, and the use of slaves was profit- 
able only on the most favorable soils. In that country the slave- 
holding system could only maintain itself by a constant expansion 
westward, absorbing more and more new land, and leaving behind 
the barren soil that had been already used up. The case is the 
same in the Roman Empire, and this constituted one of the 
reasons for the constant land-hunger of that empire’s masters, 
and for their effort to conquer new land by war. Southern Italy, 
Sicily, Greece, were already agriculturally exhausted at the be- 
ginning of the Imperial Period. 


80 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


An exhausting of the soil, coupled with an increasing lack of 
workers, as well as an irrational use of the latter, could have no 
other result than a constant decrease in the crops. 

But simultaneously the nation’s ability to purchase foodstuffs 
abroad was also decreasing. Gold and silver were less and less 
in evidence, for the mines were yielding little, as we have seen, 
laborers being few. And such gold and silver as was available 
was flowing more and more into foreign channels, some of it to 
India and Arabia, to purchase articles of luxury for those wealthy 
persons who still remained, but chiefly as tribute to the barbarous 
tribes of the border. We have seen that soldiers were being 
drawn in increasing measure from these tribes; and the number 
of soldiers was increasing who would take back their pay with 
them, or at least what remained of it, when their period of service 
was over. As the military power of the Empire declined, it was 
more and more necessary to appease dangerous neighbors, and 
keep them in good humor, which was most easily attained by the 
payment of heavy tribute. Failing in this, the territory of the 
Empire was often invaded by hostile tribes, who came for plunder. 
This also served to decrease the wealth of the Empire, and the 
last remnant of this wealth was dissipated in an effort aiming 
at its protection. As the military strength of the Empire went 
down, as domestic recruits became less and less frequent, as the 
necessity for importing recruits from abroad became more urgent, 
and the influx of hostile barbarians therefore more extensive, all 
these causes producing an increased demand for mercenaries, 
while the supply was decreasing; the wage that had to be paid 
them went higher and higher. Beginning with Caesar, this wage 
was 225 denarii ($50), in addition to which the soldier received 4 
modi of grain per month (or 2/3 medimnus or 36 liters), and 
later the monthly allowance even rose to 5 modii. A slave who 
lived on grain only, received the same monthly allowance. In view 
of the moderation in food that is observed among southerners, 
most of their needs could be filled with grain. Domitian raised the 
wage to 300 denarii ($65), and under the later emperors even 
arms were furnished free. Septimius Severus and after him Cara- 
calla made additional increases in the soldiers’ pay. 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 81 


But the purchasing power of money was then much higher 
than it is today. Seneca, a contemporary of Nero, tells us that 
a philosopher could live on half a sestertius (less than 3 cents) 
per day. The cost of 40 liters of wine was 6 cents; a lamb cost 
ro cents; a sheep about 40 cents. 

“It is apparent that the wage of the Roman legionary was very 
high in view of the prevailing prices. And in addition to his pay 
he received presents in money at the accession of new emperors; 
in the days when a new emperor was set up by the soldiers every 
few months, this made quite a difference. Upon the expiration of 
his service the soldier obtained a bonus at discharge, which in 
the days of Augustus was 3,000 denarii ($650); Caligula reduced 
this amount by one-half, while Caracalla again raised it, this time 
to 5,000 denarii (over $1,000).” ° 

And besides, the size of the standing army had to be increased 
in proportion as the attacks on the imperial boundaries became 
more numerous from every quarter. At the time of Augustus its 
strength was 300,000 men, later more than twice as much. 

These are immense figures when we recall that the population 
of the Empire was very thin, owing to the low level of agricul- 
ture, and the surplus of their labor was very meager. Beloch esti- 
mates the population of the entire Roman Empire, the size of 
which was about four times that of the present German Empire, 
as being about 55,000,000 in the days of Augustus. Italy, which 
alone now contains 33,000,000, then counted only 6,000,000. 
These 55,000,000, with their primitive technical methods, were 
obliged to support an army as large as that which is a heavy 
burden even for the present German Empire, in spite of the 
enormous technical progress that has since taken place; and this 
army of recruited mercenaries was far better paid than the Ger- 
man warrior of today.” 

And while the population was decreasing and growing poorer, 
the burdens of militarism were increasing. 

9 Paul Ernst, Die sozialen Zustinde im rémischen Reich vor dem Einfall der 


Barbaren. Die Neue Zeit, vol. xi, No. 2, pp. 253 ff. 
20 In 1908. 


82 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


There were two causes for this; together they completed the 
economic collapse. 

The two chief functions of the state in those days were war- 
fare and the construction of edifices. If it would increase the 
outlay for the former, without increasing taxes, it must necessarily 
neglect the latter, and this it did. In the period of its wealth, 
and when there was a great surplus produced by the labor of 
great numbers of slaves, the state had been rich enough to execute 
great building operations, which served not only for luxury, for 
religion, for hygienic purposes, but also for economic needs. 
With the aid of the enormous masses of peasants that were at 
its disposal, the state constructed those colossal works which we 
have not ceased to admire to this day, those temples and palaces, 
aqueducts and cloacas, and also the system of excellent roads con- 
necting Rome with the most remote possessions of the Empire, 
a mighty medium of economic and political unification and inter- 
national traffic, not to mention great irrigation and drainage oper- 
ations. Thus, by draining the Pontine swamps south of Rome, 
an immense region of fruitful soil, amounting to 100,000 hectares, 
was opened to agriculture, and at one time included not less than 
thirty-three towns. The construction and maintenance of the 
drainage plant for the Pontine swamps constituted a constant 
source of worry for those in power at Rome. This plant fell into 
such decay that to this day this entire swamp region and the land 
around it are a barren waste. 

When the financial power of the Empire weakened, its rulers 
preferred to neglect the maintenance of all these constructions 
rather than place a curb on militarism. The impressive edifices 
became impressive ruins, and their disappearance was hastened 
by the increasing lack of labor power, which made it easier to 
take building materials for such new structures as had to be 
raised, from the ruins of the old structures, than obtain it from the 
remote quarries. This method of building did more harm to the 
works of ancient art than did the devastations of the invading 
Vandals and other barbarous tribes. 

“The spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of 
ancient Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 83 


Vandals for the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor 
power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of 
war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the de- 
struction which~ undermined the foundations of those massy 
fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten 
centuries. . . . The monuments of consular, or Imperial, great- 
ness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital; 
they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, 
cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry.” * 

Not only works of art were wasted by this decay, but also 
public structures serving economic or hygienic uses, roads and 
water supply systems. This general ruin, a consequence of the 
universal economic débacle, in its turn aided in accelerating that 
débacle. 

But the military burdens were increasing in spite of everything, 
finally becoming unbearable and accomplishing the ultimate de- 
struction. The total sum of public burdens—payment in kind, 
payment in labor, money taxes—remained as large, or increased, 
while the population and its wealth were decreasing. 

More and more irksome became the burdens imposed upon the 
individual by the state. Each man sought to shift this burden 
to weaker shoulders; most of this shifting was in the direction 
of the wretched coloni, and their already disconsolate situation 
became a desperate one, as is shown by numerous uprisings, such 
as those of the Bagaudi, Gallic coloni, who first insurrected under 
Diocletian, 285 A.D., were put down after some successes at the 
start, but again and again expressed the immensity of their misery 
by engaging in renewed attempts at insurrection and rebellion. 

Meanwhile other classes of the population were also being op- 
pressed more severely, though not as badly as were the colont. 
The fiscus took everything it could lay its hands on; the bar- 
barians were not worse plunderers than the state. A constant 
process of social disintegration set in, an increasing disinclination 
and incapacity of the various members of society to perform even 


11 Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 36, 
London, 1898, vol. iv, p. 19. 


84 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the most necessary functions for the commonwealth and for each 
other. 

What had once been regulated by custom and by economic 
need, now required the forceful intervention of the state for its 
realization. Compulsory measures became more numerous after 
Diocletian. Some of these laws bound the colonus to the soil, 
thus transforming him into a serf; others obliged the landed 
proprietors to share in the administration of the city, the func- 
tion of which was chiefly to collect taxes for the state. Other 
such laws organized the artisans in compulsory unions and forced 
them to furnish their services and commodities at fixed prices; 
and the state bureaucracy needed for carrying out these compul- 
sory measures became larger. 

Bureaucracy and army—in other words, the state power—thus 
were placed in an increasing condition of opposition, not only to 
the exploited classes but also to the exploiters. For the latter 
the state was ceasing to be a protecting and encouraging insti- 
tution and becoming a plundering and devastating power. The 
hostility to the state increased; even the rule of the barbarians 
was considered a relief. The population of the border would 
escape to the free barbarian peasants, and finally the latter were 
invited by the border population as saviors and redeemers from 
the prevailing order of government and society, and welcomed 
with open arms. 

A Christian writer of the later Roman Empire, Salvianus, writes 
the following on this subject in his book, De gubernatione dei: 

“A great portion of Gaul and Spain is already Gothic, and all 
the Romans living there are animated only by the desire not to 
become Romans again. I should only be surprised if all the poor 
and needy should not desert to them, if it were not for the fact 
that they feel that they cannot leave their property and families 
behind. And we Romans consider it a wonder that we cannot 
overcome the Goths, while we Romans prefer to live among them 
rather than among our own people.” The migration of nations, 
the inundation of the Roman Empire by hosts of rude Germans 
did not mean the untimely destruction of a flourishing, advanced 
civilization, but merely the termination of a process of dissolution 


THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM 85 


of a dying civilization and the laying of the basis for a new cul- 
tural growth, which, to be sure, proceeded for centuries in a very 
slow and uncertain manner. f 

In the four centuries that lie between the foundation of the 
imperial authority by Augustus and the migration of nations, 
Christianity took shape: in the period which begins with the 
highest culmination attained by the ancient world, with the most 
colossal and most intoxicating accumulation of wealth and power 
in a few hands; with an immense heaping of the greatest misery 
on slaves, declining peasants, artisans and the lowest proletarians; 
with the most violent class oppositions and the most cruel class 
hatred—and which ends with the complete impoverishment and 
desperation of the whole system of society. __ 

All these conditions have put their marks on Christianity and 
left their traces in its form. 

But Christianity also bears the marks of other influences aris- 
ing from the national and social life of the times, which was 
built upon the basis of the mode of production above described, 
and which in many ways even magnified the effects of this mode 
of production. 


Il, THE LIFE OF THE STATE 
a. The State and Trade 


IN addition to slavery there were two other modes of exploita- 
tion in ancient society which also reached their culmination about 
the time of the origin of Christianity, sharpened class antagonisms 
to the utmost, and then progressively accelerated the destruction 
of society and of the state: usury, and the plundering of the sub- 
jected provinces by the all-conquering central power. Both of 
these institutions are closely bound up with the character of the 
state as then constituted, which in general is so closely interwoven 
with the economic situation of the times that we have had to men- 
tion the state repeatedly in our discussion of the basis of state 
and society, namely, the mode of production. Our first duty is 
therefore to present a short outline of the ancient state. 

The democracy of antiquity never reached out beyond the 
limits of the town community or the clan. The clan was formed 
by one or more villages who owned and administered a certain 
territory incommon. This was done by direct levies on the part 
of the people itself, in its assembly of all the adult members of 
the clan. This condition necessarily required that the com- 
mune or clan be not too extensive; its territory might be just large 
enough to enable each member to travel from his farm to the 
popular assembly without undue exertion and loss. It was im- 
possible in ancient times to develop any democratic organization 
beyond these proportions, the necessary technical and economic 
conditions for such expansion being absent. Only modern capi- 
talism with its printed books and its post-offices, with newspapers, 
railroads, and telegraphs has been able to weld the modern na- 
tions into units not only as to language, as were the ancient 
nations, but also into solid political and economic organisms. 
This process remained essentially incomplete until the Nineteenth 


Century. Only England and France were enabled by special cir- 
86 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 87 


cumstances to become nations in the modern sense at an earlier 
date, and to establish a national parliamentarism, the basis of 
democracy on any larger scale than that of the commune. But 
even in these countries this condition was made possible only by 
the leadership of two great centers, London and Paris, and as late 
as 1848 the national democratic movement was dominated by the 
movement of certain outstanding communities—Paris, Vienna, 
Berlin. 

In antiquity, with its far less advanced transportation facilities, 
democracy remained limited to the extent of the commune. 
Transportation between the countries on the Mediterranean was, 
it is true, of rather respectable proportions in the First Century of 
our era, even going so far as to place two languages in a position 
of international importance, namely, Greek and Latin. But un- 
fortunately this was accomplished precisely at the time when 
democratic and political life as a whole were on the downward 
path—unfortunately, we say, but not as the consequence of an 
unfortunate accident. The evolution of traffic between the com- 
munities was at that time necessarily connected with conditions 
that were bringing about the death of democracy. 

It is not our task to prove this in the case of the countries of 
the Orient, in which democracy, limited to the commune, became 
the basis for a special kind of despotism. We shall here only 
consider the specific course of events in the Hellenic and Roman 
worlds, and shall examine only one example, that of the Roman 
community. Here the tendencies of the ancient evolution are 
emphatically evident, because here that evolution proceeded more 
rapidly and on a more gigantic scale than in the case of any other 
of the city communities of the ancient world. But in all these 
communities the same tendencies were at work, though perhaps 
on a more modest and petty scale. 

The extent of each clan and commune had very narrow 
boundaries, beyond which it could not push out, and which caused 
the various clans and communes to remain fairly equal so long 
as a purely peasant economy prevailed. Nor were there at this 
stage many causes for jealousies or conflicts between them, as 
each clan and commune produced in general all that it needed. 


88 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


At the worst an increase in population might cause a lack of land. 
But the increase in population could not lead to an extension 
of the clan boundaries, for the latter could not become so broad 
as to prevent each member from being able to travel to the leg- 
islative popular assembly without excessive effort and loss. Once 
all the arable land of the clan was actually under cultivation, the 
excess number of young men capable of bearing arms would set 
out to emigrate and establish a clan of their own, either by driving 
out other weaker elements, or by settling in regions where there 
was still a lower mode of production, with a consequently thinner 
population and more available space. 

Therefore the individual communes and clans remained of 
fairly equal strength. But this condition changed as soon as 
trade began to operate side by side with the peasant economy. 

We have already seen that the trade in commodities begins 
very early, going back into the Stone Age. In regions where a 
number of much desired raw materials were easily attainable, 
while elsewhere they occurred infrequently or not at all, it was 
natural that the inhabitants of such regions should acquire more 
of such raw materials than they consumed, and that they should 
develop greater skill in the winning and manipulation of such 
articles. ‘They would then give their surplus in exchange for 
other products to their neighbors, who in turn would transmit 
it further. In this process of exchange from tribe to tribe many 
products were able to cover incredibly great distances. The pre- 
supposition for this trade was a nomadic mode of life on the part 
of individual hordes who frequently came in contact with each 
other in their roamings and on such occasions exchanged their 
surpluses. 

Such opportunities ceased when man took to settling down, but 
the need for an exchange of commodities did not cease; particu- 
larly, the need for tools or at least the material of which to make 
them, which was easily accessible in a few deposits only, and 
therefore hardly obtainable except through the trade in commodi- 
ties, necessarily grew. To satisfy this need, a peculiar class of 
nomads had to be formed, the merchants. These were either 
nomadic tribes of cattle-breeders, who now devoted themselves 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 89 


to supplying goods from districts in which they were abundant, 
and therefore cheap, to other districts where they were rare and 
therefore expensive, with the aid of their beasts of burden, or 
they were fishermen, who sailed in their boats along the coast or 
even from island to island. But as trade thrived more and more, 
even peasants were induced to take it up. As a rule, the landed 
proprietor class had an arrogant contempt for trade; the Roman 
aristocracy considered usury to be a decent occupation, but not 
trade; all of which does not prevent the landed proprietor from 
occasionally drawing great advantages from trade operations. 
Trade follows certain routes which therefore are more frequently 
traveled. Towns lying on such roads receive their commodities 
with greater ease than do others, and in the merchants they find 
purchasers for their wares. At many points, where it happens to 
be impossible to turn aside from the road, and which cannot be 
circumvented, and which in addition are in a position fortified by 
nature, the inhabitants and masters of such places are enabled 
to stop the merchants and mulct them, by imposing taxes upon 
them. On the other hand, other points become storing places 
where commodities must be transshipped, for instance, seaports 
or crossroads, where merchants arrive in large numbers from the 
most varied quarters and commodities often lie stored for some 
time. 

All the communes thus favored by nature in the matter of 
trade necessarily develop beyond the proportions of peasant com- 
munes, and while the population of a peasant commune soon 
reaches a limit in the extent and fertility of its territory, the popu- 
lation of a trading town is independent of the fertility of the soil 
it owns and may reach out far beyond it. For in the commodi- 
ties which it controls it possesses the means of purchasing every- 
thing it needs, in other words, of also obtaining foodstuffs from 
beyond the clan boundaries. With the trade in agricultural 
tools, in raw materials and tools for industry, and in industrial 
luxury products, there also develops the trade in the foodstuffs 
required by city dwellers. 

But the expansion of trade itself does not encounter any fixed 
limits, and by its nature it continues reaching out beyond the 


90 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


boundaries already obtained, ever seeking new customers, new 
producers, new deposits of raw materials, new industrial regions, 
new purchasers for its products. Thus the Pheenicians very 
early in history passed out of the Mediterranean and reached 
North as far as England, while in the South they rounded the 
Cape of Good Hope. 

“At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and 
Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and even on the Atlantic 
Ocean and the North Sea. The field of their commerce reached 
from Sierra Leone and Cornwall in the west, eastward to the coast 
of Malabar. Through their hands passed the gold and pearls of 
the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lions’ and panthers’ 
skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the 
linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wines of Greece, the silver 
of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba.” ” 

The artisans naturally prefer to settle in the trading towns, 
in fact the latter furnish the only market for many classes of 
artisans, thus encouraging the formation of such classes: on the 
one hand there are the merchants who are seeking goods, and on 
the other hand there are the peasants from the surrounding vil- 
lages who travel to town on market days in order to sell their 
foodstuffs and purchase tools, weapons, and adornments with the 
proceeds. The trading town also assures the artisans of the 
necessary supply of raw materials, without which they cannot 
practice their trade. 

In addition to the merchants and artisans a class of wealthy 
landed proprietors also arises in the city community. The mem- 
bers of the original commune of this city, who hold ownership 
in the city lands, now become rich, as real-estate is in demand 
among the new arrivals, becoming valuable and constantly rising 
in price. They further profit by the fact that among the com- 
modities brought by the merchant there are also slaves, as we 
have already seen. Certain families of landed proprietors who, 
for one reason or another, pass beyond the stratum of common 
peasants by their greater property in land or their wealth, are 
now enabled to extend their agricultural plant by the accession of 


12 Theodor Mommsen, History of Rome, New York, 1895, vol. ii, p. 132. 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 91 


slaves, in fact they may even have this land operated by slaves 
only, themselves retiring to the city and devoting themselves to 
urban business, city administration, or warfare. A landed pro- 
prietor of this type, who formerly had only a farm in the sur- 
rounding territory, may now also build a town house and live in 
it. Such landed proprietors continue to base their economic 
strength and their social position on their property in land and 
agriculture, but in addition they become city-dwellers and in- 
crease the city population by their numerous households, which 
in time, with the addition of slaves for purposes of luxury, may 
become very extensive, as we have seen. 

Thus the trading town constantly increases in wealth and popu- 
lation, but as its strength grows, its warlike spirit and the desire 
for exploitation also grow. For trade is not the peaceful thing 
that bourgeois economics would teach us, and this was least of all 
true in the days of its beginnings. Trade and transportation 
were then not yet divorced. The merchant could not sit in his 
office, as he does today, receive the orders of his customers in 
writing, and fill them with the aid of the railroad, the steamship, 
and the mails. He had to carry his wares to market himself, 
and this required strength and courage. Through pathless fields, 
on foot or on horseback, or over stormy seas on small open boats, 
he was obliged to be on the road for months, often for years, far 
from home. This involved burdens not inferior to those of a 
campaign, to which only strong men were equal. 

Nor were the dangers of the trip less serious than those of 
warfare. The merchant was threatened at every moment not 
only by nature, with her billows and cliffs, her sandstorms, her 
lack of water or nutrition, icy cold or pestilential heat. The 
valuable treasures which the merchant carried with him con- 
stituted a booty which invited the stronger to take them from 
him. While trade at first had passed only between tribe and 
tribe, it was later practiced only by extensive bodies of men, by 
caravans on land, by commercial fleets on sea. And every mem- 
ber of such an expedition had to be armed and capable of defend- 
ing his possessions, sword in hand. Thus trade became a school 
for the warlike spirit. 


92 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


But while the great value of the commodities which he car- 
ried with him obliged the merchant to develop the strength of 
a warrior in order to defend them, this warlike strength in turn 
became a temptation to apply it for purposes of attack. The 
profit of trade resulted from obtaining cheap and selling dear. 
But the cheapest way of obtaining anything was unquestionably 
that of taking what one wanted without giving compensation. 
Robbery and trade are therefore at first closely connected. 
Wherever he felt himself the stronger, the merchant easily be- 
came a bandit, when valuable booty was in sight—and not the 
smallest of such booty was man himself. 

But the merchant needed his warlike strength not only in 
order to enable him to make his purchases and acquisitions as 
cheaply as possible, but also in order to keep competitors away 
from the markets that he was frequenting; for the greater the 
number of buyers, the higher the price of the commodities which 
he wanted to buy; and the greater the number of sellers, the 
lower the prices of commodities which he was carrying to mar- 
ket; in other words, the greater the resulting difference between 
the price of purchase and that of sale, which means the profit. 
Wherever a number of large commercial cities arise in close 
proximity, wars soon develop among them, the victor having the 
prospect not only of driving his competitors off the field, but 
also of transforming the competitor from a profit-robbing factor 
into a profit-bringing factor; either in the most radical manner, 
not capable of frequent repetition, of absolutely plundering the 
opponent’s city and selling its inhabitants into slavery, or by the 
less radical method, involving fresh gain each year, of incorporat- 
ing the vanquished city into the state as an “ally” who is under 
the obligation to furnish taxes and troops and to refrain from 
injuring the victorious competitor in any way. 

Certain trading towns, particularly favored by their situation 
or by other circumstances, may in this way combine many other 
cities, with their territories, into a state organization, without 
necessarily preventing the continued existence of a democratic 
constitution in each such town. But the totality of these cities, 
the state as a whole, is nevertheless not governed democratically, 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 93 


for the single victorious city is alone in control while the others 
must obey without having the slightest control in matters of leg- 
islation and administration of the state as a whole. 

In Greece we find a great number of such city states, the most 
powerful of them being Athens, but none of the victorious cities 
was strong enough to subject all the others permanently, to gain 
final control of all its rivals. Therefore the history of Greece 
is nothing but an eternal war between the various cities and city 
states among themselves, very rarely interrupted by a common 
defense against a common enemy. These wars immensely ac- 
celerated the downfall of Greece, as soon as the consequences of 
the slave-holding economy, already described, made themselves 
felt. But it is ridiculous to become morally indignant at this 
situation as do some of our professors. The struggle against 
the competitor is a necessary corollary of trade. The forms of 
this struggle change, but the struggle necessarily enters the war 
phase when sovereign commercial cities stand face to face. The 
spectacle of Greece rending her own flesh was therefore unavoid- 
able as soon as trade began to make its cities great and powerful. 
But the final goal of every competitive struggle is the driving out 
or suppression of the competitor, monopoly. No city in Greece 
became strong enough to attain this goal, not even powerful 
Athens. That was reserved for an Italian city, Rome, which 
became the ruler of the entire system of civilization about the 
Mediterranean Sea. 


b. Patricians and Plebeians 


Competition with rivals is not the only cause for which a great 
commercial city may wage war. Where its territory is contigu- 
ous with that of robust peasants, particularly cattle-raising peas- 
ants in the mountains, who are usually poorer than farming 
peasants in fruitful plains, but less definitely fixed to the soil, 
men accustomed to bloodshed and hunting, an excellent school 
for war—the wealth of the city may easily arouse the desire for 
booty on the part of the peasants. The latter may pass care- 
lessly by the smaller country towns, serving only the local trade 
of a limited area and sheltering a few petty artisans besides, but 


94 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the treasures of a great trading center must necessarily attract 
and tempt them to band together in masses for a predatory attack 
on the wealthy community. On the other hand, the latter is 
constantly at an effort to extend its possessions in land and the 
multitude of its subjects. We have seen that the growth of the 
city is accompanied by the development of an extensive market 
within it for the products of agriculture, and that the soil which 
is producing commodities for the city becomes valuable, stimu- 
lating the desire for more land and for laborers who may till this 
newly acquired land for its conquerors. A constant struggle 
between the city and the surrounding peasant tribes is the result. 
If the latter are victorious the city is sacked and must start all 
over again. But if the city is victorious, it takes away a portion 
of the land of the defeated peasants, turning it over to its own 
landowners, who sometimes settle their landless sons on it, but 
for the most part have the conquered land tilled for them by 
compulsory labor, which is also furnished by the defeated com- 
munity, in the form either of tenants or serfs or slaves. Some- 
times, however, a gentler procedure is taken; the subjected popu- 
lation is not only not enslaved, but even admitted to citizenship, 
in the victorious city; not to full citizenship, to be sure, for the 
full citizens rule the city and the state in their assembly, but to 
citizenship of the second class, enjoying full freedom and all the 
legal protection of the state, but without any share in its gov- 
ernment. Such new citizens were much needed by the city as its 
wealth and consequently its burden of war increased, since the 
families of the old-time citizens were no longer capable of fur- 
nishing the required number of citizen soldiers. Military duty 
and the rights of citizenship are at first very closely connected. 
There was no way of rapidly increasing the number of warriors 
except by having the state receive new citizens. Not the least of 
the reasons for Rome’s rise to greatness was in the fact that it 
was very generous in the bestowal of citizenship on immigrants 
as well as on the neighboring communities which it had defeated. 

The number of such new citizens could be extended at will. 
The limits imposed upon the number of old-time citizens did not 
apply to the new citizens. These limits were in part of a physical 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 95 


nature. Since the city administration was the function of the 
Assembly of the old citizens, this Assembly might not be made 
so large as to make it impossible to transact business, nor could 
the citizens live so far from the place of assembly as to render 
it impossible for them to travel to that place without difficulty 
and without neglecting their farms at certain periods. But such 
objections did not apply in the case of the new citizens. In 
cases where certain political rights were given them, even the right 
of voting in the Assembly of citizens (which rarely was the case 
at their first admission to citizenship), it was not at all necessary 
—from the point of view of the old citizens—that the new citi- 
zens should be able to take part in these Assemblies. The more 
the old citizens had things their own way, the more they liked it. 

The limits imposed upon the numbers of the latter therefore 
had no application to the numbers of the new citizens. 

The number of new citizens could be increased as much as 
desired; it was limited only by the size of the state and by the 
state’s need of reliable soldiers. For even when the duty of 
supplying troops was imposed upon the subjected provinces, the 
army still needed a nucleus that assured its trustworthiness, and 
such a nucleus could only be supplied by a strong contingent of 
citizen soldiers. Thus there arises in the growing city a second 
form of undemocratic organization for the state. While on the 
one hand the great city community becomes the absolute mistress 
of numerous communes and provinces, there arises within the 
citizenship of the commune, now extending far beyond the limits 
of the former city territory and the city lands, an antagonism 
between the old-style citizens or full citizens (patricians) and the 
new citizens (plebeians). Both of these processes transform the 
democracy into an aristocracy, not by limiting the circle of citi- 
zens with full privileges, or by elevating a few privileged persons 
above them, but by the growth of the state itself, in which this 
circle remains the same while all new elements joining the ancient 
community or clan have fewer rights or no rights at all. But 
these two modes of evolving aristocracy out of democracy do not 
pursue exactly the same course. One of these types of exploita- 
tion and control of the state by a privileged minority, the rule 


96 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


of one community over an entire empire, may be constantly in- 
creasing in extent, as is shown by the example of Rome; and it 
must increase, so long as the state still has vital energy and is 
not overthrown by a superior power. But the case with the new 
citizens without political rights is quite different. As long as 
these citizens are peasants only, they accept their restricted rights 
more or less calmly. Owing to the great distance between their 
farms and the city, they are for the most part not able to leave 
home early in the morning, attend the Assembly of citizens on 
the city market place at noon, and return home again by evening. 
And with the growth of the state, its internal and external con- 
ditions become more and more complicated, politics and even war- 
fare becomes a business requiring a previous training not ac- 
cessible to the peasant. He therefore has no understanding 
whatever of all the personal and technical questions that are dis- 
cussed in the political assemblies of the city, and consequently 
feels very little need of demanding the right to have a part in 
them. 

But the body of new citizens does not remain limited to peas- 
ants. Foreigners who take residence in the city and are con- 
sidered useful to the city are made citizens. Nor do the con- 
quered districts upon which citizenship is conferred include only 
mere villages; they even embrace cities with artisans and mer- 
chants as well as great landed proprietors who own a town house 
in addition to their country house. As soon as the latter acquire 
the rights of Roman citizenship, they begin to feel the need of 
moving from the smaller town to the large city, in which they are 
now more than tolerated and to which they are attracted by the 
easier opportunities for employment and the more interesting 
amusements. Meanwhile, in the manner already indicated, more 
and more peasants are being expropriated by war and the require- 
_ ments of slavery. The best asylum for such disinherited ele- 
ments is again the large city, of which they are citizens, and in 
which they attempt to make their way as artisans or burden- 
carriers, as peddlers, or as mere parasites of some rich master 
whose clients they become for every possible sort of service, and 
whose courtiers they are—the Lumpenproletariat. 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 97 


Such elements have far more time and opportunity than the 
peasants to concern themselves with city politics, the effects of 
which upon them are far more perceptible and direct. They have 
an active interest in obtaining an influence in politics, in substi- 
tuting an Assembly of the entire citizenry for an Assembly of 
old citizens only, and in achieving for all the citizens the right 
of electing state officers and passing laws. 

As the city grew, the number of all these elements continued 
growing, while the circle of old citizens did not increase. There- 
fore this circle became relatively weaker and weaker, the more 
since it did not possess any military power separate from that 
of the entire citizenry, and since the new citizens as well as the 
old citizens were soldiers, bearing arms, and trained in their use. 
Thus we have in all the cities of this kind a bitter class struggle 
between old citizens and new citizens, invariably terminating 
sooner or later with the victory of the latter, therefore of democ- 
racy, which amounts to nothing more nor less, however, than an 
expansion of the aristocracy, as the disfranchisement and ex- 
ploitation of the provinces possessing no citizen rights continues. 
Indeed, very often, increases of territory take place, sometimes 
even accompanied by a severer exploitation of the provinces, at 
the same time that democracy is making progress within the 
ruling city. 


c. The Roman State 


All these struggles, which are characteristic of every flourish- 
ing commercial city of antiquity, are found fully developed in 
Rome when that city first appears in history. 

Rome was much favored by its situation in becoming a staple 
center for commodities. The city lies on the Tiber, at some dis- 
tance from the seacoast, which in those days was no obstacle to 
maritime trade, because ships were very small; in fact, it was an 
advantage, for, being further from the coast, the city was better 
protected against pirates and floods than cities on the coast. It 
is no accident that so many of the older great commercial cities 
did not arise on the seacoast itself, but on navigable rivers at 


98 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY ' 


some distance from their mouth—Babylon and Bagdad, London 
and Paris, Antwerp and Hamburg. 

The city of Rome arose at a point where the Tiber was still 
navigable and where two hills, easily fortified, came down to 
meet the river, thus assuring protection and security for the 
storehouses used by ships discharging or loading. The district 
in which Rome was situated was still rude, inhabited only by 
peasants, but to the North and South of it there were lands in an 
advanced stage of economic development, Etruria and Campania, 
with an active industry, extensive trade, and already having an 
agricultural economy based on compulsory labor. And from 
Africa the Carthaginians, who were at about the same stage of 
civilization as the Etruscans and the Greek colonies of Southern 
Italy, came with their wares. 

This geographic position was very favorable to Rome. The 
commercial city seemed to the peoples of its immediate environ- 
ment, the Latins and Volscians, to represent a higher culture; 
but to those of the more remote surroundings, the Etruscans and 
Italic Greeks, the Romans remained a mere rude peasant folk. 
As a matter of fact, agriculture remained the chief source of live- 
lihood for the Romans, in spite of all the increase in trade. Not 
being near the sea, they knew nothing of navigation and ship- 
building, but left to foreign merchants and skippers the task of 
sailing to Rome and carrying on its trade. This condition re- 
mained unchanged and partly explains the fact that the Jews 
constituted such an important colony in Rome at the time of 
Caesar and his immediate successors, in other words, about the 
time of the origin of Christianity. They had succeeded at that 
time in getting control of a portion of the Roman trade. A 
similar condition may still be noted today in Constantinople, 
where trade is chiefly in the hands of non-Turks. | 

The more prosperous Rome became by reason of its trade, the 
more it came into conflict with its neighbors. The market for 
foodstuffs, which was opened by trade, stimulated the Roman 
landed proprietors to extend their possessions at the expense of 
their neighbors, while the latter were inspired with greed for the 
wealth of the city. On the other hand, competitive struggles 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 99 


arose with the Etruscan cities. A series of long and severe wars 
was fought by the young community, but it came out of them 
_ victorious, thanks to its peculiar double position, which we have 
already mentioned. The higher technical resources and the firm 
organization of the large city triumphed over the peasants; but 
the Etruscans, who had already lost some of their military power 
as a consequence of the displacement of a free peasantry by com- 
pulsory labor, were defeated by the toughness and endurance of 
the Roman peasant. 

As soon as Rome had become strong enough to dispose of the 
Etruscans, it learned in this procedure what an excellent business 
war might be. Far more wealth was to be gained by warfare 
than by trade, since the latter was mostly in the hands of for- 
eigners, or by agriculture, which, owing to peasant operation, 
yielded very slight profits each year. If the wars were success- 
ful, and were waged against wealthy cities and nations, much 
plunder and tribute resulted. Trade and banditry are closely 
associated from the very start, but probably not another com- 
mercial city has so much emphasized the banditry phase, or made 
it even a national institution, if not a basis of the greatness of 
the city, establishing all the national institutions on this basis, 
as did Rome. 

As soon as it had conquered and plundered the Etruscan cities 
and made them its tributaries, Rome turned toward those rich 
neighbors in the South whose growing wealth had also involved 
a loss of their military power, for reasons that have often been 
stated in these pages, with the result that the booty was at the 
same time more desirable and more easy to take. But this wealth 
was simultaneously attracting the glances of another peasant 
people, the Samnites, who had to be defeated before the Greek 
cities in Southern Italy could be taken by Rome. It was a case 
of peasant tribe fighting peasant tribe, but the Samnites had no 
large city, like Rome, at their center, which might have given a 
centralized organization to the peasant fighting forces. There- 
fore they succumbed, and thus the path was cleared for Rome to 
plunder and subject the wealthy cities of Southern Italy. 

It was but a single step from Southern Italy to Sicily, which, 


100 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


no less wealthy than the Greek portion of Italy, also strongly 
attracted the predatory Roman hosts. But in this field the Ro- 
mans encountered a serious enemy, the Carthaginians. Carthage, 
a powerful commercial city not far from present-day Tunis, had, 
under the influence of the same predatory instinct as Rome, sub- 
jected the western half of the North African coast, as well as 
Spain, and was now trying to do the same with Sicily. Carthage 
was a colony of the Phcenicians, who had been forced at an early 
period by the nature of their country to take up navigation, and 
had attained their great supremacy in this field. Carthage also 
attained its greatness and its wealth by means of navigation; 
Carthage produced sailors, not peasants. In the place of a peasant 
economy it developed the Jatifundia system with cheap captured 
slaves, and also some mining. It therefore lacked a popular 
peasant army. As soon as Carthage was forced to penetrate from 
the coast-line into the interior, in order to consolidate its con- 
quests and develop military power on land, it had to resort to 
the hiring of mercenaries. 

The struggle between Rome and Carthage, the three so-called 
Punic Wars, began in 264 B.c., and was not definitely ended until 
Carthage was destroyed in 146 B.c. Of course this struggle had 
already been decided by the defeat of Hannibal, which brought 
about the end of the Second Punic War in 201 B.c. These strug- 
gles became wars between mercenary armies and peasant armies, 
between professional and militia forces. Often the former were 
successful; under Hannibal, Rome came close to defeat, but the 
militia army, defending its own homes, finally turned out to be 
more enduring, and forced Rome’s opponent to its knees at the 
end of the mighty conflict. Carthage was razed to the ground, 
its population destroyed; its immense resources in latifundia, 
mines, conquered cities, were the victor’s booty. 

Thus fell Rome’s most serious opponent; Rome now ruled 
without interference in the western half of the Mediterranean; 
it was soon to rule also the eastern half, whose nations had 
already advanced far on the ancient road to destruction, which 
means the displacement of free peasants by the compulsory labor 
of slaves or serfs, and the impoverishment of the peasant by un- 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 101 


ending wars, and the replacement of the militia forces by mer- 
cenaries. The nations of the Eastern Mediterranean were now 
so weak from a military point of view as to be unable to offer 
any serious resistance to Rome’s armies. The latter subjugated 
one city after the other, without difficulty, one country after the 
other, in order to plunder them and condemn them to pay eternal 
tribute. From this time on, Rome was to be the mistress of the 
ancient world until the Teutonic barbarians succeeded in prepar- 
ing the same fate for Rome that Rome had already prepared for 
the Greeks, although the latter were far superior to Rome as far 
as art and learning were concerned. Not only in economics and 
politics, but also in philosophy and art, the Romans never were 
more than the plunderers of the Greeks. Rome’s greatest think- 
ers and poets were almost all of them plagiarists. 

The richest lands of the then known world, which had accumu- 
lated the countless treasures of a civilization lasting for centuries, 
or as in the case of Egypt, for thousands of years, were now 
exposed to be plundered and robbed by Rome. 

The enormous exertion of military force which brought about 
this imposing result, was at Rome’s disposal only when Rome was 
a democracy, a city in whose existence all classes of the population 
—although not all in equal degree—had a serious interest. In a 
long and dangerous struggle, lasting from the Sixth to the Fourth 
Century B.c., the new citizens, or plebeians, had succeeded in 
wresting from the old citizens, the patricians, privilege after privi- 
lege, until finally all legal differences between the two estates had 
disappeared and the popular assembly of all the citizens had the 
privilege of adopting the laws and electing the highest officials, 
the consuls, pretors, zediles, who subsequently entered the Senate 
after the expiration of their term of office; and the Senate was 
the actual government of the whole state. 

But the Roman people did not thus acquire control of the 
state, but only the right of electing the rulers. And the more 
the Lumpenproletariat predominated in the population of the city 
of Rome, the more did this democracy really become an instru- 
ment of gain, a means of extorting largess and amusements from 


102 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the candidates. We have already become acquainted with the 
clientes, who hired themselves out to rich masters for services of 
every kind. In the case of those clientes who had the right to 
vote, one of the most important of their services was that of 
voting according to the desires of their patrons. Every wealthy 
Roman, every wealthy family, thus controlled numerous votes in 
the popular assembly, which they manipulated in the ‘interests 
of the clique to which they belonged. A few cliques of rich fam- 
ilies in this manner kept the government of the state in their 
hands and again and again would succeed in securing the election 
of the members of their families to the higher state offices, and 
therefore ultimately to the Senate. Democracy did not change 
anything in this system except in that it also permitted wealthy 
barbarian families to penetrate into the favored circle, which was 
limited to patricians while the aristocratic régime endured. 

After their election, the consuls and pretors were obliged to 
spend the first year of their official activity in Rome. In the 
second year each of them assumed the administration of a prov- 
ince and tried in this new field to recover the expenses that had 
been incurred by candidacy for the office, and also to realize some 
profit on the investment; for these officials received no salaries; 
the offices were “offices of honor”. On the other hand, the pros- 
pect of the profit which could be realized in the provinces by 
extortion and bribery, often also by outright robbery, was a cause 
for pressing one’s candidacy for office most emphatically, with the 
result that the various candidates outvied each other in their 
gifts and amusements for the people. 

But the more the various modes of purchasing votes increased 
the prospects of gain from the sale of the privileges of citizenship 
by the Lumpenproletariat, the greater was the temptation for 
those peasants who held the rights of Roman citizens to give up 
their wretched, laborious and oppressed condition in the country 
and travel to Rome. This tendency in turn increased the num- 
bers of the rabble holding the franchise, and also the demands 
-made on the candidates. In the time of Caesar there were not 
less than 320,000 Roman citizens in Rome who were receiving 
grain gratis from the state; the number of votes that could be 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 103 


purchased was therefore probably about 320,000. It may be 
imagined what enormous sums were used up in an election. 

In the year 53 B.c., the purchase of votes created such a 
demand for cash, that interest on capital rose considerably and a 
crisis ensued.** 

“The nobility (the office-seeking nobility) had to pay through 
the nose,” observes Mommsen. ‘A gladiatorial combat cost 720,- 
000 sesterces (about $40,000). But they were glad to pay, as 
they were thus keeping out of office all persons who had not much 
money.” *# 

Indeed, they paid frequently, for there were new elections each 
year. They did not pay, however, from any idealistic motive, 
but because they knew they were thus purchasing permission to 
engage in a far more profitable plundering of the provinces and 
therefore making a very good trade. 

“Democracy”, or the rule over the population of the entire 
Roman Empire, consisting of fifty or sixty million inhabitants, by 
a few hundreds of thousands of Roman citizens, thus became one 
of the most effective means of exaggerating in the highest degree 
the plundering and draining of the provinces, by immensely in- 
creasing the number of persons participating in this operation. 
Not only did the governors do all they could in the way of extor- 
tion, but each of them would take over a host of “friends” with 
him, who had helped him in the election, and who now set forth, 
as a reward, to rob and plunder under his protecting wing. 

But this was not all; the usurious money capital of Rome 
also was unleashed against the provinces, in which it had every 
opportunity to develop its destructive power to the full, and to 
attain a position of importance which it did not enjoy in any other 
portion of the ancient world. 


d. Usury 


Usury itself is extremely ancient, being almost as old as trade. 
While it cannot be traced back to the Stone Age, it is nevertheless 
probably older than the use of money. As soon as a number 


18 Salvioli, Le capitalisme dans le monde antique, 1906, p. 243. 
14 History of Rome, New York, 1895, vol. iii, p. 42. 


104 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


of households were formed, with definite possessions for every 
family, it was possible for one family to become wealthier than 
others in cattle, in land, in slaves, while other families might 
become poor. It was therefore natural for peasants in embar- 
rassed situations to borrow of the superfluity of a wealthier 
neighbor, either grain or cattle, which the borrower had to promise 
to replace after an interval, together with an additional quantity, 
or to perform a certain task in exchange—this is the beginning 
of debtors’ slavery. Such transactions in usury are possible, and 
actually occur, in an economy based on natural products alone, 
even without the use of money. The ownership of large estates, 
and usury, are closely associated from the very start; and usuri- 
ous capital—today termed “high finance’”’—and large landed prop- 
erty have in many cases been on the best of terms. In Rome 
also the great proprietors were usurers as far back as we can go 
in history, and the struggle between patricians and plebeians was 
not only a struggle between the landed proprietors and the peas- 
ants for the use of the state commons, but also a struggle between 
usurers and debtors. 

But the productivity of peasant labor, and therefore the sur- 
plus produced by it, were so slight that the exploitation of great 
masses of men was necessary in order to provide the exploiters 
with any considerable wealth. While the Roman aristocrats were 
exploiting by their usury only the peasants in the immediate sur- 
roundings of Rome, they might oppress these peasants consider- 
ably without gaining very much for themselves. But the affairs 
of the Roman usurers necessarily flourished more satisfactorily 
and yielded more considerable wealth, as they gradually obtained 
access to the entire world of their day. 

But this involved also a division of labor. The taking of 
usurious interest from neighbors was not a business requiring 
much attention, and the aristocrats were able to take care of it 
without neglecting the management of their estates or the admin- 
istration of the state. On the other hand, it was difficult to ex- 
ploit Spain and Syria, Gaul and Northern Africa, while at the 
same time conducting the destinies of the enormous Roman state. 
The business of usury now begins to be differentiated more and 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 105 


more from that of government. By the side of the official nobil- 
ity, which was robbing the provinces in its capacity as generals 
and governors, not disdaining at the same time to make a little 
money on the side, there now developed a special class of usurious 
capitalists who also formed a special social organization, the 
class of “knights.” But the more numerous the class of money 
capitalists became, who were exclusively engaged in financial 
transactions, the more varied were the types of these transactions. 

One of the chief means of plundering the provinces was that 
of farming out their taxes. As yet there existed no bureaucracy 
that might have taken charge of the collection of taxes, and the 
most convenient way of collecting them was to assign this duty 
for a particular province to a Roman financier, who would deliver 
to the state the total amount of the tax and was left to indemnify 
himself as well as he could. This was a system of taxation simi- 
lar to that still practised in many parts of the Orient with such 
disastrous results. The tax farmer, of course, will not content 
himself with the amount that is rightfully his; the inhabitants of 
the provinces are at his mercy and are bled white. 

It very often comes to pass that certain cities or tributary kings 
are unable to pay the sums that have been imposed upon them. 
In this case Roman financiers are ready to make advances to 
them, for interest of course. Thus, for example, the great repub- 
lican, Junius Brutus, made “excellent speculations by lending 
money to the King of Cappadocia and to the city of Salamis. 
He made a loan to the latter at 48 per cent interest.” (Salvioli, 
op. cit., page 42.) This was not an unusually high rate of inter- 
est; Salvioli in his book reports loans made to cities at rates as 
high as 75 per cent. In cases of unusual risk, the rate of interest 
would be even higher. Thus, the great banking house of Rabirius 
in the time of Caesar lent the exiled King Ptolemy of Egypt all its 
own resources and those of its friends, at the interest rate of one 
hundred per cent. It is true that Rabirius made a bad investment, 
for when Ptolemy regained his throne, he failed to pay and had 
his importunate creditor, who claimed the entire Egyptian state 
as his domain, thrown into prison. The financier escaped to 


106 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Rome, however, and Caesar gave him a chance to make a new 
fortune in contracts for the African Wars. 

These contracts were another form of money-making. The 
tributes that were gathered in the Roman coffers from the sub- 
jected provinces were enormous. But the ceaseless wars also cost 
a lot of money, they became means by which the financiers suc- 
ceeded in pouring into their bottomless purses much of the booty 
taken in the provinces that had not gone to the financiers directly 
but been delivered to the state. They made deliveries of war 
supplies to the state—a frequent source of money-making, even 
in our day. But they would also undertake to apply usury to 
their own state, when the latter happened to be financially em- 
barrassed, which was not unusual, for the more booty the state 
succeeded in dragging from the provinces, the higher rose the 
claims on the state by all the various kinds of parasites. Great 
sums had sometimes to be advanced to the state, greater sums 
than any individual possessed. For this purpose, the formation 
of joint-stock companies was very useful. Usury is not only the 
earliest form of capitalistic exploitation, it is also the first func- 
tion of the joint-stock companies. 

Rome’s financiers ‘founded companies, corresponding to our 
joint-stock banks, having directors, cashiers, agents, etc. Under 
Sulla the Asiani Company was formed with a capital that was 
so enormous that the company was able to lend the state twenty 
thousand talents, or twenty-five million dollars. Twelve years 
later it increased this loan to one hundred and twenty thousand 
talents. . . . Smaller resources were invested in shares of the 
great companies with the result, as Polybius tells us (vi, 17), 
that the entire city (Rome) was a participant in the various 
financial undertakings headed by a few prominent firms. The 
smallest savings had their share in the enterprises of the publicans, 
which farmed out taxes and leased state lands, and yielded enor- 
mous profits.” (Salvioli, op. cit., pages 40, 41.) 

All this sounds very modern to us, and it is an indication at 
least of the fact that Roman society at the time when Christianity 
was being born had advanced to the threshold of modern capi- 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 107 


talism, and yet, the effects of this ancient capitalism were entirely 
different in kind from those of modern capitalism. 

The methods we have described here are about the same as 
those which resulted in the formation of modern capitalism, the 
methods characterized by Marx as those of “primitive accumula- 
tion”: expropriation of the peasant population, plundering of 
the colonies, slave trade, commercial wars, and national debts. 
In modern times we find these methods producing the same de- 
structive and devastating effects as they did in antiquity. But 
the difference between modern and ancient times lies in the fact 
that antiquity was able to develop only the destructive influences 
of capitalism, while the capitalism of the modern epoch begins 
with destruction in order to develop the conditions for the erection 
of new and higher modes of production. The method by which 
modern capitalism developed is surely not less barbarous and 
cruel than that pursued by ancient capitalism; but at least modern 
capitalism creates a basis for an advance beyond this cruel, de- 
structive activity, while ancient capitalism never could transcend 
that limitation. 

We have already seen the reasons for this in the preceding 
chapter. The accumulations made by modern capitalism, by 
plunder and extortion and other acts of violence, are used only 
in small part for purposes of consumption, are devoted chiefly 
to the production of new and higher means of production, thus 
increasing the productivity of human labor. The capitalism of 
the ancient world did not find the necessary preliminary conditions 
for this task. Its influence on the mode of production was limited 
to a substitution of the labor of slaves for that of the free peas- 
ants, which was equivalent to a backward step economically in 
the most important fields of production, a decrease in the pro- 
ductivity of social labor, an impoverishment of society. 

Those gains of the Roman financiers, as well as the booty of 
Roman generals and officials, that were not put to new employment 
in usury, in other words in the service of new plunder, either had 
to be lavished, on the one hand, in enjoyments, as well as in the 
production of means of enjoyment—and we must reckon not only 
palaces, but also temples among these means of enjoyment—or 


108 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


these gains, if we ignore those drawn from the few mining oper- 
ations, might be devoted to the acquisition of property, in other 
words to the expropriation of free peasants and their substitution 
by slaves. 

The plundering and devastation of the provinces therefore only 
served to give the financiers of Rome a means for permitting the 
decrease in the productivity of social labor, owing to the spread 
of slavery, to proceed more swiftly than might otherwise have 
been the case. Destruction in one field was not counteracted by 
economic prosperity in another field, as is at least sometimes the 
case with modern capitalism, but destruction in the provinces also 
accelerated the decline of Rome. Therefore, as a result of Rome’s 
world dominion, the general impoverishment of the ancient world 
begins to move faster after the beginning of the Christian era, 
than it could otherwise have done. 

But for a long time the symptoms of economic bankruptcy 
were thrown in the shade by the dazzling splendor of Rome’s 
situation. In a few decades, Rome had gathered together almost 
all the objects that centuries, even thousands of years, of diligent 
artistic work had created, in all the centers of civilization around 
the Mediterranean Sea. The political bankruptcy of the system 
became evident far sooner than its economic bankruptcy. 


e. Absolutism 


Rome destroyed political life in all the regions conquered by it, 
by breaking their capacity for resistance and depriving them of 
all independence. The entire policy of this tremendous empire 
was concentrated in the city of Rome alone. But who were the 
persons who had become the bearers of political life in that city? 
They were financiers who thought only of accumulating interest 
upon interest; aristocrats who staggered from one enjoyment to 
another enjoyment, who scorned all regular labor, all exertion, 
even the exertion of governing and waging war; and finally, the 
Lumpenproletariat, who lived by selling their political power to 
the highest bidder. 

Thus, Suetonius reports in his biography of Caesar, concerning 
the latter’s gifts after the civil wars: 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 109 


“He gave to each man of the population, in addition to ten 
modu of grain and ten pounds of oil, the three hundred sesterces 
which he had previously promised, together with one hundred 
sesterces as interest on the arrears. (In other words, $20 at a 
time when one could live on three cents a day. K.) He also 
undertook to pay (for those living as tenants in premises, K.) 
their annual rent, in Rome up to two thousand sesterces per 
family ($100), and in Italy up to five hundred sesterces ($25). 
In addition he gave a banquet (for two hundred thousand per- 
sons, K.) and distributed meat gratis; after the victory over 
Spain he also gave two public breakfasts, for the former seemed 
to him to be too scant and therefore not worthy of his generosity; 
he accordingly arranged for a second breakfast, five days later, 
which was a gorgeous feast.” (Chapter xxviii.) 

He also arranged games of unheard of splendor. One actor, 
Decimus Labirius, received five hundred thousand sesterces, or 
$25,000, for a single performance! 

Suetonius says concerning Augustus: 

“Often he distributed gifts to the people, not always of the 
same amount, sometimes four hundred sesterces ($20), some- 
times three hundred sesterces ($15), sometimes only two hun- 
dred and fifty sesterces ($12) per man. And he did not even 
overlook the younger boys, although in other distributions they 
had received nothing unless they were over eleven years of age. 
Likewise, in famine years he often had grain distributed to the 
entire population at a very low price, and doubled his instructions 
for the distribution of money.” (Octavius, Chapter xiv.) 

Of course a proletariat that permitted itself to be purchased 
in this way, that had organized its venality into a system and 
paraded it openly, lost its political independence entirely. It was 
now only a tool in the hands of the highest bidder. The struggle 
for authority in the state became a competition between a few 
bandits who had been able to accumulate the greatest booty and 
who enjoyed the most extensive credit with the financiers. 

This factor was also considerably emphasized by the rise of the 
mercenary system, which was making the army more and more 
the mistress of the Republic. After the mercenary system was 


110 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


extended, the warlike prowess of the Roman citizen declined— 
or rather, the decline in this prowess caused the increase in the 
application of the mercenary system. All the elements of the 
population capable of military service were to be found in the 
army; the population outside of the army lost more and more of 
its fighting ability and fighting spirit. | 

Two factors particularly were working in the direction of lower- 
ing the army more and more to be a willing tool of any general 
that would offer or promise it sufficient pay and booty, and to 
its being dominated less and less by political considerations. The 
first factor was the increasing number of non-Romans, of pro- 
vincials, even of foreigners, in the army, elements that had no 
rights as citizens, elements that were therefore entirely excluded 
from any participation in political life; the second factor was 
the increasing disinclination of the pleasure-loving, effeminate 
aristocrats to take part in military service. This class had hitherto 
supplied the military officers, who were now yielding ground more 
and more to the professional officers; the latter were not eco- 
nomically independent, as were the aristocrats, and had no interest 
whatever in the conflicts of the Roman parties, which were in 
reality struggles between the various cliques of the aristocracy. 

As the non-Romans in the army increased more and more, 
while the aristocratic officers continued to be replaced by pro- 
fessional officers, the greater became the army’s readiness to sell 
itself to the highest bidder and make him the ruler of Rome. 

Thus the foundation was laid for Caesarism, the condition that 
enabled Rome’s richest man to buy out the Republic, purchasing 
the political authority for himself, and this in turn was a motive 
that would stimulate a successful general, having control of the 
army, to seek to become the wealthiest man of Rome, which he 
could best achieve by expropriating his opponents, confiscating 
their possessions. 

The political life of the last century of the Republic in the last 
analysis consists of nothing but civil wars—a very erroneous term, 
as the citizens have nothing at all to do with these wars. They 
were not wars of citizens, but wars of individual politicians among 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 111 


themselves, most of whom were simultaneously both greedy finan- 
ciers and prominent generals, and who mutually slew and robbed 
each other until Augustus finally succeeded, after overcoming all 
competition, in establishing his permanent autocracy. 

To a certain extent Caesar had already succeeded in this before 
the days of Augustus; Caesar, an aristocratic adventurer who was 
deeply in debt, had conspired with two of the wealthiest Roman 
financiers, Pompey and Crassus, for the purpose of seizing the 
state power. Mommsen characterizes Crassus as follows: “His 
fortune was based on land purchases during the revolution; but 
he scorned no means of making money: he conducted building 
operations in the capital that were as magnificent as they were 
wise; he was associated with his freedmen in the most varied 
enterprises; both in and out of Rome he would act as banker, 
directly or through his friends; he advanced money to his col- 
leagues in the Senate and would undertake, for their account, 
to carry out public works or bribe judicial bodies, whatever might 
be required. He was not delicate in his choice of money-making. 
. . . He would not hesitate to accept an inheritance because the 
testament in which his name was written was a notorious for- 
gery.” 15 

But Caesar was no better; no means of making money seemed 
too low for him. Suetonius, whom we have already quoted a 
number of times, has the following to tell us in his biography of 
the Caesar whom Mommsen later glorified: 

“He showed no unselfishness either as a general or as a ruler 
of the state. For as we know from several sources, he received 
money from our allies when he was Proconsul in Spain; begged 
from them in order to pay his debts, and sacked several cities 
in Lusitania, pretending they were hostile, although they had com- 
plied with his orders and opened their gates on his arrival. In 
Gaul he robbed the temples and sanctuaries, richly stored with 
gifts; he destroyed cities more frequently for their booty than for 
their transgressions. He therefore had so much gold that he had 
it offered and sold at three thousand sesterces ($150) a pound 


18 History of Rome, New York, 1895, vol. iv, pp. 275, 276. 


112 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


in Italy and in the provinces.*® In the period of his First Con- 
sulate he stole three thousand pounds of gold from the Capitol, 
replacing it with an equal weight of gilded copper. He sold 
alliances and kingdoms for money; thus he took from Ptolemy 
(King of Egypt) alone for himself and Pompey nearly six thou- 
sand talents ($7,500,000). Later he defrayed the most oppressive 
disbursements of the civil wars, triumphs and festivities, by the 
most outrageous extortions and temple robbings.” (Julius Caesar, © 
Chapter liv.) 

The war against Gaul, which had until then been free from 
Roman oppression and therefore not subject to plunder, was 
chiefly undertaken by Caesar for the sake of gain. The rich 
booty obtained in that country enabled him to get on his feet 
and to break with his associate Pompey, with whom he had until 
then shared the business of government. The third partner, 
Crassus, had fallen in Asia in a predatory campaign against the 
Parthians, in which he had, as Appian tells us, “hoped to obtain 
not only much fame but much money” *’—in the same manner 
that had been so successfully applied by Caesar in Gaul. 

After the death of Crassus only Pompey still stood in Caesar’s 
way; Pompey was surrounded by the remnants of the aristocracy 
that were still politically active. The great Julius disposed of 
them in a series of campaigns, which also were not unprofitable 
in booty. 

“Tt is reported that in his triumphal procession (at the end of 
the civil war) he exhibited sixty thousand talents of silver as 
well as 2,822 golden crowns weighing 2,414 pounds. Imme- 
diately after his triumph he applied these treasures to satisfying 
the claims of his army, giving each soldier five thousand Attic 
drachmas (more than $1,000), twice as much to each non-com- 
missioned officer, and to the higher officers twice as much as to 
the non-commissioned officers, thus far exceeding his original 


16 The value of a pound of gold was ordinarily four thousand sesterces. 
Caesar’s plundering in Gaul forced it down a full quarter of its value in Italy. 

17 History of the Civil Wars, Book ii, chap. iii. Appian informs us that the 
Parthians had not been guilty of the slightest hostility. The war with them was 
therefore in reality a mere predatory campaign. 


THE LIFE OF THE STATE 113 


promises.” ** We have already reported, from Suetonius, the 
gifts Caesar then made to the proletarians of Rome. 

From that time on Caesar’s sole authority was not publicly 
disputed, and the Republicans were unable to voice their protests 
except by assassination. Caesar’s heirs, Antony and Augustus, 
then gave them their quietus. 

Thus the Roman Empire became the possession of a single in- 
dividual, the Caesar or Emperor. All political life ceased. The 
management of this dominion was the private affair of its owner. 
Like all other possessions, it of course was frequently disputed; 
bandits, in other words successful generals, with a strong army 
behind them, quite frequently attacked the actual possessor, who 
was in many cases slain by his own bodyguard, in order that the 
vacant throne might be sold to the highest bidder. But this was 
a financial transaction, not worse than some other such trans- 
actions of the same period, and not a political act. Political life 
‘completely ceased; soon we find, at first among the lower classes, 
later also in the upper classes, not only indifference to the state, 
but even hatred for the state and its dignitaries, for its judges, 
its tax officials, its soldiers, for the emperors themselves, who 
were really no longer able to protect anyone, who became a scourge 
even for the possessing classes, to escape from which the latter 
sought refuge among the barbarians. 

There were very few places left in the Roman Empire that 
retained any remnants of political life after Caesar’s victories, 
and these remnants also were soon wiped out by Caesar’s succes- 
sors. A vigorous political life was kept alive longest of all in 
Jerusalem, the largest city of Palestine. The most serious exer- 
tions were required to overthrow this last stronghold of political 
freedom in the Roman Empire. After a long and stubborn siege 
the city of Jerusalem was razed to the ground in the year 70 ALD., 
and the Jewish people made homeless. 


18 Appian, History of the Civil Wars, Book ii, chap. xv. 


III. CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE ROMAN 
IMPERIAL PERIOD 


a. Weakening of Social Ties 


WE have seen that the age in which Christianity originated was 
one of complete disintegration of the traditional forms of pro- 
duction and of the state. The traditional forms of thought ac- 
cordingly were also more or less moribund. There was a general 
seeking and groping for new modes of thought. The individual 
felt that he was a unit in himself, for the entire social background 
which the individual had formerly possessed in his community 
or in his clan, and the moral views handed down by them, were 
now being dissolved. Therefore one of the most prominent 
features of the new mode of thought was individualism. Of course 
individualism may never involve a complete isolation of the indi- 
vidual from his social connections; that would be entirely im- 
possible. The human individual can exist only in society and 
through society. But individualism at least may go so far as to 
cause the social bond in which the individual has grown up, and 
which therefore seems natural and self-evident to him, to lose its 
power, thus facing the individual with the task of now making 
his way outside of this former social relation. The individual 
can only achieve this by uniting with other individuals with 
similar interests and requirements, forming new social organiza- 
tions. The nature of these organizations will of course be deter- 
mined by the existing circumstances and not by the caprice of 
the individuals concerned. But these institutions do not approach 
the individual in the form of ready-made traditional organizations, 
but must be created by him in association with others of like 
aspirations, which may be accompanied by numerous mistakes 
and the greatest possible differences of opinion, until finally new 
organizations arise out of the conflict of opinions and experiments, 

114 


y! 
a 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 115 


which new organizations, corresponding to the new conditions, 
will last and offer as firm a security for later generations as did 
the former organizations to which they succeeded. In such transi- 
tional periods it may appear that society does not condition the 
individual, but that the individual conditions society, that the 
social forms, their problems and aspirations, are entirely depend- 
ent on his volition. 

Such an individualism, an individual seeking and groping for 
new modes of thought and new social organizations, is character- 
istic, for example, of the period of liberalism which followed upon 
the dissolution of the feudal organizations, without immediately 
replacing them with other new social organizations, until finally 
the new organizations of the workers and employers developed 
more and more into the dominant factors of capitalist society. 

The first centuries of the Roman Imperial Era are very similar 
to the Nineteenth Century in this dissolution of whole social 
organizations and the creation of new ones. But these periods 
also resemble each other in the fact that in both periods the 
disintegration of the old social relations proceeded most rapidly 
and most perceptibly in the large cities, the entire social life being 
gradually determined more and more by these cities. 

The peasant in the period of his strength and self-sufficiency 
was offered little opportunity for thought by the social life of the 
times, as life was definitely fixed for him by custom and habit. 
But he was obliged to devote considerable attention to nature, 
with whom he was constantly at war, who daily provided new 
‘surprises for him, on whom he was completely dependent, and 
whom he had to overcome in order to live. The question as to 
the wherefore of the various natural phenomena was therefore 
one that forced itself upon him. He first sought to answer it 
very naively by personifying various natural forces, by assuming 
the existence of numerous gods operative in nature, but in this 
way of putting the question we already have the beginnings of 
the natural sciences, which are based on the same question, the 
question of the wherefore, of the causes of all things. As soon 
as man began to understand that the relation between cause and 
effect in natural phenomena is a regular and necessary relation, 


116 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that it is not dependent on the caprice of individual divinities, 
the path was cleared for a real knowledge of the natural sciences. 
Of course this recognition could not be achieved by peasants, 
who were absolutely dependent on nature. The peasant yielded 
without resistance to the natural forces, being unable to control 
them through knowledge, but inclined to propitiate them by 
prayers and sacrifices. A scientific study of nature is possible 
only in the cities, where man is not made to feel so directly and 
emphatically his dependence on nature, with the result that he 
may begin to work as a detached observer of nature. Only in 
the cities did a class arise with sufficient leisure for observation, 
and not subject to the impulse to utilize its leisure only in bodily 
enjoyments, like the great landed proprietors in the country, 
where bodily strength and endurance are such an important ele- 
ment in production, with the result that leisure and abundance 
create amusements only of the most coarsely physical kind, such 
as the chase and the banquet. 

Natural philosophy begins in the cities, but gradually many 
cities grew so large that their populations began to be cut off from 
any relation with nature, thus losing all interest in the subject. 
The course of events was gradually assigning to these cities more 
and more of the leadership in the mental and economic life of 
large regions. Simultaneously this same course of development 
was weakening all the social bonds that had hitherto bound the 
individual to the traditional organizations and modes of thought. 
But the same process was sharpening class antagonisms, unleash- 
ing an ever more savage class struggle, which sometimes even 
assumed the form of an overthrow of existing relations. It was 
not nature, it was now society that was daily providing man with 
new surprises in the large cities, daily facing him with new, un- 
heard-of problems, daily obliging him to answer the question: 
“What shall we do next?” 

It was not the question as to the wherefore, in nature, but that 
of the should, in society, not the knowledge of necessary natural 
relations, but the apparently free choice of new social goals; this 
it was that now took up man’s thoughts chiefly. In the place of 
natural philosophy we now have ethics; the latter assumed the 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 117 


form of a search for the happiness of the individual. This was 
already the case in the Hellenic world after the Persian wars. 
We have already seen that the Roman world was only the plagia- 
rist of Greece in art and science, not having attained the posses- 
sion of its mental (nor of its material) treasures by labor, but by 
plunder. The Romans became acquainted with Greek philosophy 
when the latter was already more concerned with ethical interests 
than with an interest in the study of nature. Roman thought 
therefore never devoted much attention to natural philosophy; 
Roman philosophy from the very outset busied itself with ethics. 

Two philosophical tendencies were particularly prevalent in 
the earliest centuries of the Imperial Era, that of Epicurus, and 
that of Stoicism. 

Epicurus called philosophy an activity which brings about a 
happy life by means of conceptions and proofs. He thought he 
could attain happiness through the pursuit of pleasure, but only 
through the pursuit of rational, permanent pleasures, not through 
the desire for temporary and exaggerated sensual joys, which lead 
to the loss of health and fortune, and therefore to unhappiness. 

This was a philosophy that was quite well suited to the uses 
of an exploiting class, which had no other use to which to put 
their wealth than to consume it; what they needed was a rational 
regulation of the life of pleasure. But this doctrine gave little 
satisfaction to that constantly increasing number of persons who 
already had suffered a physical, mental or financial breakdown, to 
the poor and wretched, nor did it afford consolation to the over- 
sated, to those already nauseated by enjoyment. Nor could it 
give pleasure to those who still had some interest in the tradi- 
tional forms of the communal life, and were still pursuing pur- 
poses that transcended their own personal needs, to those patriots 
who were witnessing the decay of state and society, full of im- 
potent grief, but unable to retard the process. To all these groups 
the pleasures of this world seemed vain and shallow. They 
turned to the Stoic doctrine, which exalts virtue, not pleasure, as 
the highest good, as the only bliss. Mere external goods, health, 
riches, etc., the Stoics declared to be matters of as great indif- 
ference as were the external evils. 


118 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


This finally led many persons to turn away completely from 
the world, to scorn life, even to desire death. Suicide became a 
habit in Imperial Rome, it was for a time quite the fashion. 

But it was remarkable that simultaneously with a desire for 
death there also developed in Roman society a veritable terror 
of death. A citizen of any of the communities of classic antiquity 
felt himself to be a portion of a great whole which would survive 
after his death, and which was immortal by comparison with 
himself. He would continue to live in his community; it would 
bear the traces of his life; he needed no other immortality. Asa 
matter of fact we either do not find among the ancient nations, 
who had but a short period of cultural development behind them, 
any ideas at all of a life after death, or their idea is that of a 
life of shades, an idea produced by the need of explaining the 
appearance of deceased persons in dreams: this life of shades 
was a lamentable existence for which no person had any desire 
at all. We know the lament of the shade of Achilles: 


“Rather I should till my field as a day laborer, 

For a needy man, having no land or possessions, 

Than rule the entire host of the vanished dead!” 
(Odyssey, xi, 489-491) 


The assumption of a shadowy existence after death was, we 
repeat, a naive hypothesis required for the explanation of certain 
dream phenomena, and not the result of a real need of the spirit. , 

But things changed when the community was on the downward 
path and the individual was breaking away from it. -The indi- 
vidual was no longer possessed by the feeling that his activity 
would endure in the state; for his attitude toward the state was 
that of indifference or even hostility; and yet the thought was 
intolerable to him that he would be completely annihilated. There 
arose a fear of death such as had hitherto been unknown in 
antiquity. Cowardice flourished, Death became an image of 
terror, whereas he had formerly been considered as the brother 
of Sleep. 

More and more the need began to be felt for a doctrine which 
would maintain the immortality of the individual, not as a dis- 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 119 


embodied shade, but as a joyous spirit. Soon blessedness was 
no longer sought in earthly joy, nor even in earthly virtue, but 
in the achievement of a better hereafter, for which this life was 
merely a preparation. This conception found a powerful support 
in Plato’s doctrine, and such was the direction also taken by the 
Stoic school. 

Plato already assumed a life in the future, in which the souls, 
liberated from their bodies, would continue to live and would be 
rewarded and punished for their activities on earth. In Chapter 
xiii of Book x of his Republic, Plato tells us of a Pamphylian who 
had fallen in war, and who, when he was about to be incinerated 
on the twelfth day after his death, suddenly came to life again 
and reported that his soul, after leaving his body, had been in 
wondrous places, with great clefts extending into the sky above 
and downward into the bowels of the earth. Judges sat in that 
place, to judge the souls on their arrival and to conduct to the 
right those found to be righteous, to Heaven, where boundless 
beauty reigned; while the unrighteous were directed to the left, 
down into the bowels of the earth, into a subterranean chasm, 
where they had to atone tenfold for their sins. Those who were 
incorrigibly wicked were there seized by savage men who looked 
like images of fire, and who chained and tortured them. But the 
rest of those who were assigned to the subterranean chasm, ‘as 
well as those who were living in Heaven, were to begin a new 
life after the lapse of a thousand years. The Pamphylian who 
had seen all this maintained he was instructed to report it, where- 
upon he had been returned to life by a miracle. 

Who is there that is not reminded at once of Heaven and Hell 
in the Christian sense, of the sheep on the right and the goats on 
the left, of the eternal fire that is prepared in Hell (Matthew 
XXV, 33, 41) and of the dead who shall live again “until the thou- 
sand years are finished” (Revelation of Saint John, xx, 5), etc.? 
And yet Plato lived in the Fourth Century before Christ. Not 
less Christian is the impression produced by the words: 

“The body is the burden and punishment of the spirit; it 
oppresses the spirit and holds it captive.” 

It was not a Christian who wrote these words, but the teacher 


120 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and master of Nero, the persecutor of the Christians, the Stoic 
philosopher Seneca. 

Very similar is another passage: 

“By this fleshly envelope is the soul concealed, disguised, sepa- 
rated from that which is its own and the truth, and cast into 
. deception; the soul’s entire struggle is with the flesh that oppresses 
it. The soul strives thitherward whence it was sent forth; there 
it is attended by eternal peace, where it preserves that which is 
pure and clear after the confused and intricate appearances of 
this world.” 

In other passages of Seneca we also find a striking number of 
turns of phrase that also occur in the New Testament. Thus 
Seneca says on one occasion: “Put ye on the spirit of a great 
man.” Bruno Bauer rightly compares this expression with that 
contained in the Epistle of Paul to the Romans: “But put ye on 
the Lord Jesus Christ” (xiii, 14), and in that to the Galatians: 
“For as many of you as have been baptized into the Christ have 
put on Christ” (iii, 27). These coincidences have led some per- 
sons to conclude that Seneca was using Christian sources, even 
that Seneca was a Christian; the latter is the product of the 
Christian imagination. As a matter of fact, Seneca wrote before 
the various parts of the New Testament were composed; if there 
was any borrowing at all, therefore, we may rather assume that 
the Christians were drawing upon the widely disseminated writ- 
ings of the fashionable philosopher of that day. But it is just 
as reasonable to assume that both were using, independently of 
each other, turns of phrase that were in vogue at the time. 

Particularly with regard to the expression “putting on Christ”, 
Pfleiderer points out that it is borrowed from the Persian cult 
of Mithra, which was much in favor in Imperial Rome. He tells 
us concerning the influence of this cult on Christian conceptions, 
among other things: 

“The Mithra sacraments also included a sacred meal, at which 
the sanctified bread and a cup of water or even wine served as 
mystic symbols of the distribution of the divine life to the Mithra- 
believers. At such celebrations, the latter appeared in animal 
masks indicating by these representations attributes of their god 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 121 


Mithra; the celebrants had ‘put on’ their god, which meant that 
they had entered into a community of life with him. This, too, 
is paralleled closely by Paul’s teaching of the Lord’s Supper as 
a ‘communion’ of the blood and of the body of Christ (I Cor. x, 
16), which he who had been baptized, has ‘put on’ (Gal. iii, 27).” + 

Seneca is not the only philosopher of his time who devised or 
used turns of phrase that appear to us as Christian. 

Particularly the notions with which we are dealing at this 
moment, those of the immortality of the soul and the life here- 
after, were finding more and more adherents at the time in which 
Christianity originated. Thus the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who 
lived early in the Christian era, ends his First Book on the Alle- 
gories of the Law with the sentence: “Heraclitus also has said, 
‘We live the deaths of them (the gods) and have died their lives’; 
for, as we live, the soul has died and is encased in the body as 
in a mound, whereas the soul lives its own life after we have died, 
and is liberated from the evil and the corpse of the life to which 
it had been chained.” 

The preparation for the life hereafter began more and more 
to be regarded as more worthy than the struggle for the goods 
of this world. The Kingdom of God took the place of the wealthy 
of this world: but how find this kingdom? Formerly the citizen 
had possessed three distinct and reliable guides in conduct, in the 
form of tradition, the popular will, the needs of the community. 
These were now absent. Tradition had resolved itself into an 
empty shadow; the people no longer had any united will; the 
citizen was now indifferent to the needs of the community. Con- 
cerned only with himself, the individual was helpless in the tor- 
rent of new ideas and relations that was inundating society, and 
cast about for a firm anchor, for doctrines and teachers that 
would teach him the truth and a correct philosophy of life, point- 
ing out to him the right path to the Kingdom of God. 

As in every case when a new need arises, there were numerous 
persons who sought to satisfy this demand. The preaching of 
individual morality began, the morality by means of which the 
individual could, without altering society, elevate himself out of 

1 Pfleiderer, Christian Origins, New York, B. W. Huebsch, 1906, p. 158. 


122 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and above society and become a worthy citizen of a better world. 

In what other activity could oratorical and philosophical talents 
engage? All political activity had ceased; the interest in the 
study of the causes of things, in scientific work therefore, had 
lessened. What was left for the ambition of orators and philos- 
ophers, besides conducting litigations for the acquisition of prop- 
erty, or preaching the doctrine of contempt for property, becoming 
therefore either jurists or preachers? Both these fields, as a re- 
sult, were very extensively cultivated in the Imperial Era, and the 
Romans were exceedingly productive at that time both in decla- 
mations concerning the emptiness of the goods of this world, as 
well as in legal paragraphs devised for the protection of these 
goods. It became the fashion to deliver edifying speeches and 
to fabricate edifying maxims and anecdotes. The Gospels also 
are nothing more or less than a compilation of such collections 
of maxims and anecdotes. 

Of course this era may not be judged merely by its moralizing 
rhetoric. There is no doubt that the new morality with its con- 
tempt for this world answered certain strong mental needs, which 
in turn were produced by very real social conditions. But in 
fact it was impossible to escape from the world; the world always 
turned out the stronger. There resulted that contradiction be- 
tween moral theory and moral practice which is inevitable in any 
moral doctrine of this stamp. 

A classic example of this is Seneca, whom we have already 
mentioned several times. ‘This excellent Stoic delivered himself 
of moral sentiments against taking part in politics, and censured 
Brutus who had violated, he said, the fundamental principles of 
Stoicism by taking part in such activity. But the same Seneca 
who rebukes the Republican Brutus for participating in political 
conflicts was an accessory to all the bloody deeds of Agrippina 
and Nero and played pander to the latter, for the sole purpose of 
retaining his position as minister. This same Seneca thundered 
in his writings against wealth, avarice and the love of pleasure, 
but in the year 58 a.p. he was obliged to hear Suilius accuse 
him in the Senate of having accumulated his millions by forging 
testaments and engaging in usury. According to Dio Cassius, 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 123 


the insurrection of the Britons under Nero was partly caused 
by the fact that Seneca had made them a loan of ten million 
denarit ($2,200,000) at a high rate of interest, and later had 
suddenly tried to collect the entire sum in the most brutal manner. 
This eulogist of poverty left behind him a fortune of three hun- 
dred million sesterces ($15,000,000), one of the greatest fortunes 
of those times. 

In the face of this magnificent example of true hypocrisy, it is 
almost an understatement of the case when the satirist Lucian, 
a century later, ridicules, in his Hermotimus, a Stoic philosopher 
invented by him, who preaches contempt for money and enjoy- 
ments, and gives assurance that his teaching results in a noble 
equanimity in all the vicissitudes of life, and who nevertheless 
sues his scholars in the courts if they are unable to pay him the 
tuition agreed upon, who gets drunk at banquets and becomes so 
heated in disputes that he casts a silver beaker at the head of 
his opponent. 

Moral preaching had become the fashion in the Imperial Era. 
But people sought not only for moral teachings that could be a 
support to weak spirits who were not independent, who had lost 
all their background together with their common public activities 
and traditions; the need was also felt for a personal support. 
We already read in Epicurus: “‘We must seek for ourselves a noble 
man to have him constantly before our eyes, that we may live 
as if he watched and act as if he beheld it.”’ Seneca quotes this 
passage and then continues: ‘“‘We need a guardian and teacher. 
A great number of sins will disappear if the stumbling man has a 
witness by his side. The spirit must have someone whom it 
venerates with a respect that sanctifies also its innermost kernel. 
The mere thought of such a helper has a guiding and corrective 
power. He is the guardian, model, and rule, without which one 
cannot rectify that which is wrong.” 

Thus people became accustomed to choosing a deceased great 
man as their patron saint. But some persons even went so far 
as to subject their conduct to the control of persons still living, 
moral preachers who pretended that they were superior, owing 
to their magnificent morality, to the rest of humanity. Stoicism 


124 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


had already declared the philosopher to be free from error and 
defects. By the side of sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy, a 
pharisaical arrogance of the moral teacher now began to develop 
—dqualities which were unknown in classic antiquity, which were 
the outgrowth of a period of social decay, and which necessarily 
became more and more prominent, as science was being replaced 
in philosophy by ethics, in other words, as the investigation of the 
world was being displaced by the drawing up of demands upon 
the individual. 

Moral preachers now arose for each social class, preachers who 
claimed to be able to elevate man to a greater moral perfection 
through the example of their own sublime personalities. The 
chief teachers of this kind for the proletarians were philosophers 
of the School of the Cynics, successors to the famous Diogenes, 
who preached in the streets, lived by begging, and found happi- 
ness in filth and frugality, which made it unnecessary for them 
to engage in any work, which they hated and despised as a ter- 
rible sin. Christ and his apostles are sometimes represented as 
mendicant street preachers. The Gospels have no place for work; 
in this they all agree, in spite of all their contradictions. 

But the aristocrats had their own personal moralists, most of 
whom belonged to the Stoic School. 

“After the manner of the great since the time of the Scipios, 
Augustus kept his own philosopher about him in the person of 
Areus, a Stoic from Alexandria, and Livia also became his dis- 
ciple in order to obtain consolation from him after the death of 
her son Drusus. Augustus had Areus with him in his retinue 
when he entered into Alexandria after the battle of Actium, and 
introduced him to his fellow citizens in a speech (in which 
Augustus promised the Alexandrians to pardon them for having 
supported Antony) as being one of the motives for his clemency. 
Similar spiritual guides served the spiritual needs of the great in 
other palaces and houses. Having formerly been the teachers of 
some new theory, they had become for the Romans, after the 
civil wars, practical spiritual guides, mental directors, consolers 
in misfortune, confessors. They would accompany the victims 
of the imperial caprice to their death and give them their last 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT F25 


ministrations. Canus Julius, who received his death sentence 
from the Emperor Caligula with an expression of thanks, and 
who died with calm and composure, was accompanied on his last 
journey by ‘his philosopher’. Thrasea admitted his son-in-law 
Helvidius and the Cynic Demetrius, the latter practically his 
domestic clergyman, to the chamber where he caused his own 
veins to be opened, and in the torment of his slow death he kept 
his eyes fixed upon him.” (Bruno Bauer, Christus und die 
Cdsaren, pages 22, 23.) 

Thus, even before the rise of Christianity, we find the father 
confessor entering upon the scene, and, owing to the force of the 
new circumstances, not to the teachings of any individual person, 
a new historic power arises in the countries of Europe, priestly 
rule. To be sure, there had for a long time been priests among 
the Greeks and Romans, but they had been of very slight impor- 
tance in the state. Not until the Imperial Era do we begin to 
find the conditions in the countries of Europe ripe for priestly 
rule, which had already existed in early antiquity in many coun- 
tries of the Orient. We now find even in the Occident the neces- 
sary preliminary conditions for a clergy, for the priestly caste as 
rulers of men, which by the sanctimoniousness and arrogance of 
many of its members is already beginning to develop the traits 
that are characteristic of a priesthood, and which, in all ages 
down to the present day, have caused it to be hated by all the 
vigorous elements of society which have no need of any guard- 
ianship. 

Plato had already declared that the state would not be prop- 
erly governed until the philosophers controlled it and the remain- 
ing citizens no longer had anything to say. Now his dream was 
being fulfilled in a manner that would, of course, not have been 
much to his taste. But these moral preachers and father con- 
fessors were by no means sufficient for the weakened generation 
then living. The state was moving irresistibly toward destruc- 
tion. Louder and louder was the knocking of the barbarians at 
the gates of the Empire, whose flesh was often rent by the bloody 
disputes of its own generals. The poverty of the masses in- 
creased; depopulation was progressive. Roman society was 


126 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


brought face to face with its end; but this generation was too 
corrupt, too weak in body and spirit, too cowardly, too spineless, 
too completely at variance with itself and with its surroundings 
to be able to make an energetic attempt to free itself from these 
intolerable conditions. It had lost faith in itself, and the only 
support that preserved it from complete despair was the hope for 
assistance from some higher power, some redeemer. 

They first considered the Caesars to be this redeemer. In the 
days of Augustus a prophecy from the Sybilline books was in 
circulation, promising a redeemer in the near future.” Augustus 
was regarded as a prince of peace leading the disorganized Empire, 
after the civil wars, toward a new epoch of splendor and pros- 
perity, with “peace on earth for men of good-will’. 

But the Caesars brought neither permanent peace nor economic 
or moral advancement, in spite of all the confidence that was 
placed in their divine powers, great though this confidence actu- 
ally was. 

They were actually classed with the gods; before the doctrine 
of the god turned man had originated, the notion of the man 
turned god was accepted, in spite of the obviously greater diffi- 
culty of this latter procedure. Where all political life has been 
extinguished, the lord of the state rises so majestically above the 
mass of the population that he really must impress them as su- 
preme, since he alone appears to unite within himself the entire 
force and power of society and to direct it according to his will. 
On the other hand, the gods were conceived in a very human 
manner in antiquity. The transition from superman to god was 
therefore not a very difficult one. 

The degenerate Greeks of Asia and Egypt had begun several 
centuries before our era to consider their despots as gods or the 
offspring of gods; they even venerated their philosophers as such. 
Within the lifetime of Plato there had already arisen the legend 
mentioned in the funeral discourse delivered by his nephew 
Speusippus, that his mother Periktione had conceived him not 
from her husband, but from Apollo. When the Hellenic realms 

2 Merivale, The Romans Under the Empire, 1862, vol. vii, 349. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 127 


became provinces of Rome, they transferred their divine worship 
of their kings and philosophers to the Roman governors. 

But Julius Caesar was the first man who dared demand of the 
Romans what the cowardly Greeks offered him: to be worshiped 
as a god. He boasted of his divine origin; his ancestress was 
no less a person than the goddess Venus, as Virgil, the court poet 
of Caesar’s nephew Augustus, later explained in detail in his long 
epic, the Zineid. 

When Caesar returned to Rome from the Civil War, as a victo- 
rious triumphator, it was resolved in Rome “to erect a number of 
temples to him as to a god, including one to be sacred to him and 
to the goddess of clemency, in which he was represented as clasp- 
ing the hand of this goddess.” * By this cunning device it was 
attempted to appeal to the clemency of the victor. After his death 
the “divine Julius” was formally admitted by decision of the 
people and the Senate of Rome to the galaxy of the Roman gods. 
And this was done, says Suetonius, “not superficially only, by a 
mere resolution, but because of the inner conviction of the people. 
For did not a comet appear during the games that his successor 
Augustus provided for the people, the first after Julius had become 
a god, for seven days in succession, rising about the eleventh hour 
(between five and six o’clock in the afternoon)? It was believed 
that this was the soul of Cesar, who had risen heavenward. 
Therefore he is still depicted with a star over his head.”’ (Chapter 
Ixxxix.) Does this not recall the star which indicated the 
divinity of the Christ child to the wise men of the East? From 
the time of Augustus it was considered as self-evident that each 
emperor should be admitted to divinity after his death. In the 
eastern portion of the Empire he therefore was given the Greek 
name Soter, meaning redeemer. 

But these canonizations (apotheoses) were not limited to de- 
ceased emperors, but were also bestowed on their relations and 
favorites. Hadrian had fallen in love with a handsome Greek 
youth, Antinoos, who “became in every manner the favorite of the 
Emperor,” as Hertzberg delicately expresses it in his Geschichte 


8 Appian, Civil Wars of Rome, ii, 16. 


128 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


des rémischen Kaiserreichs (page 369). After his lover had 
drowned in the Nile, Hadrian at once had him placed among the 
gods, as a reward for his versatile services, had a splendid city 
built not far from the scene of the accident, which he named 
Antinoopolis, and in this city a magnificent temple for his singular 
saint. The worship of this youth rapidly spread throughout the 
Empire; in Athens festive games and sacrifices were arranged 
in his honor. But Suetonius reports concerning Augustus: 
“Although he knew that temples were dedicated even to Pro- 
consuls (governors) he nevertheless did not accept this honor in 
any province unless the temple was dedicated to both him and 
Roma together. Within Rome he always emphatically rejected 
this honor.”’ (Chapter li.) 

But Augustus was comparatively modest. The third emperor 
of the Julian dynasty, Gaius, nicknamed Caligula (little boot), 
caused himself to be worshiped in Rome while still alive, not only 
as a demigod, but as a full god, and felt himself to be such. 

“Even as those,” he once said, ‘who must guard sheep and 
oxen, are neither sheep nor oxen but have a higher nature, so 
also are those that have been placed as rulers over men not men 
as others, but gods.” It is in truth the sheepish nature of men 
which produces the divinity of their rulers. This sheep-like qual- 
ity was very strongly developed in the Imperial Era. And there- 
fore the divine worship of the emperors and their favorites was 
taken as seriously as some persons today take the gift of a bit 
of ribbon for their buttonholes, ascribing miraculous effects to 
such a bestowal. Of course this divine worship involved a good 
deal of servility; in this respect the Imperial Era has not been 
excelled even to this day, and that means a good deal. But in 
addition to servility, credulity also played a great part. 


b. Credulity 


This credulity was also an outgrowth of the new conditions. 
From his earliest beginnings, man is forcibly made to observe 
“The English translation of this book (Imperial Rome, Philadelphia, 1905) 


tactfully omits both the delicacy and indelicacy of this reference (p. 149, foot- 
note). —TRANSLATOR. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 129 


nature closely, to avoid being deceived by any of her phenomena 
and to grasp clearly a number of relations of cause and effect. 
His whole existence depends on this ability; where he does not 
succeed, his destruction only too often results. 

Man’s whole conduct is based on the experience that certain 
definite causes are followed by certain definite results, that the 
stone thrown by man will kill the bird on striking it, that the 
meat of this bird will appease his hunger, that two bits of wood 
rubbed against each other will produce fire, that fire gives warmth, 
while it also consumes wood, etc. 

Man will then judge other natural events on the basis of his 
own conduct as determined by such experiences, where these 
events are more or less impersonal. He beholds in them the 
effects of the actions of individual personalities, endowed with 
superhuman powers, the gods. The latter are not at first workers 
of miracles, but producers of the regular natural course of events, 
of the blowing of the wind, the surging of the sea, the destructive 
power of lightning, but also of men’s ideas, wise as well as stupid. 
It is well known that the gods make blind them whom they would 
destroy. The production of such results continues to remain the 
principal function of the gods in primitive natural religion. 

The charm of this religion is in its naturalness, in its acute 
observation of persons and things, which to this day makes the 
Homeric poems, for example, unexcelled as works of art. 

This acute observation and constant investigation for the where- 
fore, for the causes of things in the external world, became more 
delicate with the development of the cities and that of natural 
philosophy in the cities, as we have seen. The urban observers 
now became able to discover impersonal phenomena in nature, 
very simple indeed, but of such rigid regularity that they were 
easy to recognize as necessary relations, altogether transcending 
the realm of the caprice that is associated with the conception 
of personal divinities. It was particularly the motion of the stars 
that gave rise to the conception of law and necessity in nature. 
Natural science begins with astronomy. These ideas are then ap- 
plied also to the rest of nature; everywhere a search begins for 


-_ 


130 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


necessary relations of law. The regular recurrence of a certain 
experience is the basis for this mental activity. 

But this condition changes, when, in response to the causes 
already indicated, the interest in the scientific investigation of 
nature recedes and is replaced by the ethical interest. The human 
spirit is no longer preoccupied with such simple motions as the 
paths of the stars, tor example, which furnish an easy point of 
departure; it is concerned exclusively with itself, with the most 
complicated, most variable, most intangible phenomenon, one that 
resists scientific study longest of all. Furthermore, ethics no 
longer involves a knowledge of that which is and was, of what 
is present in experience, and usually in a regularly recurring 
experience; ethics concerns itself with plans and obligations in 
the future, as yet entirely beyond experience, constituting there- 
fore a field of absolute free-will that lies before us. In this field 
the wish and the dream have the freest play, the imagination may 
disport itself unbridled and rise above all the barriers of experi- 
ence and criticism. Lecky correctly observes in his History 
of the Spirit of Rationalism: “The philosophy of Plato, by 
greatly aggrandizing the sphere of the spiritual, did much to 
foster the belief; and we find that whenever, either before or 
after the Christian era, that philosophy has been in the ascendant, 
it has been accompanied by a tendency to magic.” ° 

Simultaneously, life in the large cities deprives their population, 
now the dominant mental element in the entire population, of a 
direct contact with nature, frees them both from the necessity and 
the possibility of observing and understanding nature. The con- 
ception of that which is natural and that which is possible begins 
to waver; the population loses its standard for the absurdity of 
the impossible, the unnatural, the supernatural. 

The more impotent the individual feels himself to be, the more 
timidly he seeks for a firm support in some personality that stands 
out from the ordinary average; and the more desperate the situa- 
tion becomes, the more a miracle is needed to save him—the more 


5Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in 
Europe, New York and London, roro, vol. i, p. 43 (vol. i, p. 7 of the Truth 
Seeker edition, New York, 1910). 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 131 


likely will he be to credit the person to whom he attaches himself 
as a rescuer, aS a Savior, with the performance of miracles. In 
fact, he will demand these miracles as a test to prove that his 
savior really possesses the power to rescue him. Reminiscences 
of divine legends of an earlier period may also play a part; 
motives borrowed from such legends are frequently embodied in 
the new myths. But the latter are quite different from the 
former. Superhuman powers were assigned to the old gods in 
order to afford an explanation of actual events that had been very 
precisely and correctly observed. Now superhuman powers were 
assigned to men, in order to enable them to produce effects that 
no one had yet observed, that were entirely impossible. Such 
wondrous phenomena might have been developed by an over- 
active imagination even in the most ancient times from the old 
legends of the gods; but the old legends are not based on such 
miraculous events. The miracle constitutes the point of departure 
for the new forms of myths. 

One of the points in which the older and later legends most co- 
incided was the begetting of the hero by a god. In early times 
men loved to exalt the splendor of their ancestors, to represent 
the man from whom their race took its origin (to make him 
appear very splendid) as a superman, a demigod. According to 
the mode of thought then in vogue, which sought a god behind 
all things, he could of course obtain the necessary power only 
from a god. And since these gods, in spite of all their super- 
human qualities, were conceived in a very human manner, with 
very human emotions, it was natural to assume that the mother 
of the ancestral hero had inspired a tender passion in a god, the 
fruit of which was this brave hero. 

Similarly, the later legends also had the redeemers of the 
world produced by mortal mothers, but with divine fathers. Thus, 
Suetonius tells us: ; 

“In the book of Asklepiades of Mendes concerning the gods, 
I read that Atia, the mother of Augustus, had once gone at mid- 
night to a solemn service in honor of Apollo, and had fallen 
asleep in her litter while waiting for the arrival of the other 
women. Suddenly a serpent joined her on the couch, leaving her 


Le FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


soon after; on awaking she had the same feeling as if her husband 
had been with her and therefore cleansed herself. Immediately 
a spot appeared on her body, of the form of a serpent, which was 
ineradicable, causing her thenceforth to absent herself from the 
public baths. In the tenth month later Augustus was born, where- 
fore he was considered as a son of Apollo.” (Octavius, Chapter 
XCiV. ) 

An intrigue with a god seems at that time to have been con- 
sidered by the Roman ladies as not only possible, but also as quite 
distinguished. Josephus tells a pretty story in this connection. 
At the time of Tiberius there lived in Rome a lady by the name 
of Paulina, whose beauty was as great as her chastity. A wealthy 
knight, Decius Mundus, fell mortally in love with her and offered 
her two hundred thousand drachmas for a single night, but was 
rejected. But a liberated female slave was able to help him; 
she had learned that the beautiful Paulina was a zealous wor- 
shiper of the goddess Isis, and accordingly laid her plans. She 
bribed the priests of this goddess by paying them forty thousand 
drachmas, to cause Paulina to be informed that the god Anubis 
desired her. ‘‘This lady was delighted and boasted to her friends 
of the honor Anubis was thus bestowing on her. She also told 
her husband that Anubis had invited her to dine and cohabit with 
him. The husband gladly consented, knowing his wife’s virtue. 
Thereupon she went to the temple, and after having supped, bed- 
time having come, the priest extinguished all the lights and locked 
the door. Mundus, who had already been concealed in the temple, 
now joined her and waited for no invitation. He had his will 
with her all night, because she thought he was the god. Having 
sated his lust, he departed in the morning, before the priests 
entered the temple, and Paulina returned to her husband, inform- 
ing him that the god Anubis had been with her, and also boasting 
of it to her friends.” 

But the noble knight Decius Mundus carried his impudence to 
the point of upbraiding his lady some days later, on meeting her 
in the street, for having given herself up to him for nothing. The 
pious lady, now disillusioned, was of course terribly indignant, 
made straightway for Tiberius and succeeded in having the priests 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 133 


of Isis crucified, their temple destroyed, and Mundus banished.° 

This little story is rendered the more amusing by reason of the 
fact that it follows immediately upon the passage we mentioned 
at the beginning, in which the praises of the miraculous Christ are 
enthusiastically sung. The juxtaposition of these two passages 
did not fail to attract pious commentators at a very early day; 
they saw a connection between Christ and Madame Paulina’s 
adventure, beholding in it a disguised slander by the wicked Jew 
Josephus on the virginity of Mary and the simplicity of her 
betrothed Joseph, a slander which of course would be hardly com- 
patible with the recognition of the miracles of Christ that is con- 
tained in the passage immediately preceding. But as Josephus 
actually knows nothing of these miracles, and as the passage con- 
cerning them is a later Christian interpolation, as the reader now 
knows, this insinuation against the holy Virgin and her submis- 
sively acquiescent betrothed is entirely unintentional. It proves 
only the stupidity of the Christian forger, who chooses precisely 
this passage as the most suitable companion-piece for his testi- 
mony concerning the son of God. 

To be a son of God was a portion of the business of a redeemer, 
whether he was a Caesar or a street preacher. But it was also no 
less necessary to perform miracles, which in both cases were in- 
vented along the same lines. 

Even Tacitus, who was not at all inclined to exaggeration, 
reports (Histories, iv, Chapter Ixxxi) concerning Vespasian, 
that the latter had worked many miracles in Alexandria, proving 
Heaven’s good will to the Emperor. Thus he had moistened the 
eyes of a blind man with saliva and thereby made him to see. 
Likewise, he had stepped upon the lamed hand of another and 
thus cured it. 

The power of performing such miracles was later transferred 
from the pagan emperors to the Christian monarchs. The kings 
of France possessed the remarkable gift of being able to cure 
scrofula and goiter at their coronation by a mere touch. As late 
as 1825, at the coronation of Charles X, the last Bourbon to 
occupy the French throne, this miracle was duly performed. 


6 Antiquities of the Jews, xviii, 3. 


134 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Similar healings by Jesus are of course reported more than once. 
The pious Merivale* assumes that Vespasian’s miracle had been 
performed according to the Christian model—a view that does 
not seem plausible when we consider how insignificant and un- 
known Christianity was at the time of Vespasian. Bruno Bauer, 
on the other hand, declares in his book, Christus und die Casaren: 
“T shall delight the learned theologians of the present day with my 
assertion that the later author of the Fourth Gospel, and later 
still, the editor of the primitive Gospel contained in the St. Mark 
version, borrowed the application of saliva in the miraculous heal- 
ings of Christ from this work of Tacitus.” (John ix, 6; Mark 
vii, 33; Vili, 33.) 

But in our opinion it is not necessary to assume even this case 
of borrowing. Every epoch that believes in miracles also has its 
peculiar notions of how they are produced. In the later Middle 
Ages it was generally assumed that a compact with the devil had 
to be signed with warm blood; two writers might both make use 
of this treatment in the same way in their stories, without one 
necessarily having borrowed from the other; similarly, in Ves- 
pasian’s day, and later, saliva may have been considered a proper 
material for use in miraculous healings, with the result that it 
was natural not only for the sober reporter of the temporal re- 
deemer on the throne of the Caesars to ascribe healing by this 
method to the person to be glorified, but also for the more ecstatic 
reporter of the redeemer on the throne of the millennial kingdom; 
neither author needs to have borrowed from the other. Surely 
Tacitus did not invent this treatment, but found the legend in 
general circulation. 

Not only the Caesars were operating miracles then, but also a 
great many of their contemporaries. Tales of miracles were then 
so common that they ceased to receive any particular attention. 
Even the narrators of the Gospels do not represent the miracles 
and tokens of Jesus as producing the profound impression which 
we, with our modern attitude, should expect them to produce. 
Even after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Christ’s 
disciples remain incredulous. Furthermore, not only Jesus but 

7 The Romans Under the Empire. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 135 


also the apostles and disciples performed many miracles. In fact, 
people were so credulous that it never occurred to Christians to 
have doubts as to miracles emanating from persons whom they 
considered impostors. They escaped from the difficulty by the 
simple device of ascribing such miracles to the power of the devil 
and evil spirits. 

Miracles grew like mushrooms, every founder of a religious 
sect or a philosophical school brought them forth as his letter of 
recommendation. For instance, we have the example of the Neo- 
Pythagorean, Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of Nero. 

Of course, even his birth is miraculous. When his mother was 
pregnant the god Proteus, the wise god understood by none, 
appeared to her; but she asked him without fear what child she 
should bear. Whereupon he answered: “Me.”*® The young 
Apollonius grows up, a prodigy of wisdom, preaching a pure moral 
life, distributes his fortune among his friends and poor relatives, 
and travels about in the world as a mendicant philosopher, but 
he is even more impressive by his miracles than by his frugality 
and morality. The miracles have a striking resemblance to those 
of Christ; thus we are given an example from the time of his 
sojourn in Rome: 

“A virgin had died on the day of her wedding, at least she was 
considered dead. The bridegroom followed her bier, lamenting, 
and Rome lamented with him, for the maiden was of a very aris- 
tocratic family. Now when Apollonius encountered the proces- 
sion, he said: ‘Set down the bier, I shall stop your tears over this 
maiden.’ When he asked her name, the multitude thought he 
intended to deliver one of the customary funeral orations, but he 
touched the dead girl, speaking a few words that were not under- 
stood, and awakened her from her trance. But she lifted up her 
voice and returned to her father’s house.” ° 

According to the legend Apollonius boldly opposes the tyrants 
Nero and Domitian, is made a prisoner by them, succeeds in free- 
ing himself without difficulty from his fetters, but does not flee, 


8 Apollonius of Tyana, translanted from the Greek of Philostratus, with notes 
by Ed. Baltzer, 1883, i, 4. 
9 Op. cit., iv, 45. 


136 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


awaiting his trial in prison; he delivers in court a long speech in 
his own defense, and then, before judgment is spoken, disappears 
mysteriously from the court chamber in Rome, suddenly putting 
in his appearance a few hours later at Dikearchia, near Naples, 
whither the gods had forwarded him with the speed of an express 
train. 

Apollonius possesses in a high degree the gift of prophecy which 
was indispensable to the business of a redeemer, as well as the 
ability to see things going on in other parts of the world. When 
Domitian was murdered in his palace at Rome, Apollonius at 
Ephesus beheld the act as clearly as if he had been on the spot, 
immediately informing the Ephesians of it. This is a feat of 
wireless telegraphy compared with which Marconi is a cheap 
amateur. 

He ended by disappearing into a temple whose doors had opened 
to receive him, and closed behind him. ‘From within they heard 
songs of maidens which sounded as if they were inviting him to 
rise heavenward, with the words: ‘Come out of the dark of earth, 
enter into the light of Heaven, come.’ ” *° 

Apollonius’ body was never found. It was therefore manifest 
that this redeemer also had ascended heavenward. 

A sharp competition soon set in between the miracles believed 
by the adherents of Christianity and those performed by Apol- 
lonius. Under Diocletian, one of the later governors, Hieroclis 
by name, wrote a book against the Christians, in which he pointed 
out that the miracles of Christ were as nothing when compared 
with those of Apollonius and furthermore, not equally well 
attested. Eusebius of Czesarea wrote a reply to this book, in 
which he expressed not the slightest doubt of the reality of the 
miracles of Apollonius, but merely attempted to belittle them by 
designating them not as divine acts, but as acts of magic, the work 
of the spirits of darkness. 

In other words, even where it became necessary to oppose 
miracles, no one thought of doubting them. 

And this credulity rose with the increasing disintegration of 
society, with the decline in the spirit of scientific investigation, 

10 Op. cit., p. 378. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 137 


and the luxuriant spread of moral preaching. The increase in 
credulity was accompanied by an increased love of miracles. All 
sensations cease to produce an effect when too often repeated. 
Stronger and stronger stimuli must be applied in order to make 
an impression. In our first chapter we saw how this rule is 
applied in the Gospels, where it can be definitely traced in the 
example of the awakenings from the dead, which are simpler in 
the older Gospels than in the later ones. 

The youngest Gospel, that of Saint John, adds to the older mir- 
acles, which were reported by the earlier Gospels, the miraculous 
production of wine at the wedding at Cana; John goes so far as 
to say that a sick man healed by Jesus had been sick for thirty- 
eight years, while a blind man whom he causes to see was born 
blind; in other words, the miracles are made more outrageous at 
every point. 

In the Second Book of Moses, xvii, 1-6, we read the story that 
Moses struck water from a rock in the desert in order to give 
drink to the thirsty Israelites. This was not enough of a miracle 
for the Christian period. We learn from the First Epistle of the 
Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (x, 4), that the rock from which 
the Jews received water had traveled through the desert with them 
in order that they might never lack water—a nomadic gushing 
rock. 

Particularly crude are the miracles appearing in the so-called 
“Acts of the Apostle Paul”. In a competition of miracles with 
the magician Simon, the apostle restores life to a salted herring. 

On the other hand, perfectly natural events were miracles in 
the eyes of men in those days, evidences of the arbitrary inter- 
vention of God in the course of nature, not only convalescences 
and deaths, victories and defeats, but every-day amusements such 
as wagers. “When in a horse-race at Gaza, in which the horses 
of a pious Christian and a pious pagan were competing, ‘Christ 
defeated Marnas’, many pagans caused themselves to be bap- 
time. )/ | 


11 Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Empire, London 
(Routledge), vol. iii, p. 197. 


138 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


But the natural event that was interpreted as a miracle was 
not always susceptible to one interpretation only. | 

“During the war against the Quadi (173-4) in the reign of 
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman army, overcome by the heat of the 
blazing sun, found itself surrounded by a superior force, and 
threatened with annihilation. Then suddenly thick clouds gath- 
ered together, rain fell in torrents, and a fearful storm wrought 
havoc and confusion in the ranks of the enemy; the Romans 
were saved and gained the victory. The effect of this event was 
overwhelming: according to the custom of the time it was im- 
mortalized by pictorial representation, was generally regarded as 
a miracle, the memory of which lasted till the last days of antiq- 
uity, and for centuries afterwards was appealed to by both 
Christians and pagans as a proof of the truth of their respective 
faiths. . . . The marvelous deliverance of the army appears to 
have been generally attributed to the emperor’s prayer to Jupiter; 
others, however, asserted that it was really due to the art of an 
Egyptian magician Arnuphis, a member of his suite, who had 
drawn down rain from heaven by calling upon the gods, especially 
Hermes.” But according to the account of a Christian contem- 
porary, the miracle had been wrought by the prayers of the Chris- 
tian soldiers of the twelfth (Melitenian) legion. Tertullian also 
(197) refers to the Christian version as well known, and appeals 
to a letter of Marcus Aurelius in support of it.” 

The eagerness for miracles, and the popular credulity, assumed 
larger and larger proportions, until finally in the period of the 
greatest degradation, in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries, the 
monks practiced miracles compared with which those of Jesus, 
as reported in the Gospels, are very unimpressive. 

“A believing age was easily persuaded that the slightest caprice 
of an Egyptian or a Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt 
the eternal laws of the universe. The favorites of Heaven were 
accustomed to cure inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or 
a distant message; and to expel the most obstinate demons from 
the souls, or bodies, which they possessed. They familiarly ac- 
costed, or imperiously commanded, the lions and serpents of the 


12 Friedlander, op. cit., vol. ili, p. 123. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 139 


desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron 
on the surface of water; passed the Nile on the back of a croco- 
dile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace.” ** 

An excellent characterization of the mental attitude of the time 
in which Christianity arose is that drawn by Schlosser, in his 
Weltgeschichte, of Plotinus, the most famous Neo-Platonic phi- 
losopher of the Third Century of our era. 

“Plotinus, who was born in 205 at Lycopolis in Egypt, and 
who died in 270 in Campania, was for eleven years a diligent 
pupil of Ammonius, but buried himself so deeply in thought on 
the subject of divine and human nature that, not contented with 
the Egyptian-Greek mystic teachings of his predecessor and 
teacher, he reached out also for Persian and Indian wisdom, and 
attached himself to the army of the younger Gordianus and went 
to Persia with him. . . . Plotinus later went to Rome, where he 
found the prevalent inclination for Oriental mysticism very much 
to his purpose, and played the prophet for twenty-five years, 
until shortly before his death. The Emperor Gallienus and his 
wife regarded him with such superstitious veneration that it is 
said that they even had the intention of establishing a philosoph- 
ical state in one of the cities of Italy, to be governed according 
to the principles of Plotinus. Equally great was the approval 
Plotinus received from the most respected families of the Roman 
citizenry; some of the most prominent men of the city became 
his most zealous champions and received his teaching as a mes- 
sage from Heaven. 

“The spiritual and moral weakening of the Roman world and 
the generally prevalent inclination toward hysterical rapture, 
toward monkish morality and toward supernatural and prophetic 
qualities, are nowhere expressed so clearly as in the impression 
produced by Plotinus and in the respect which his doctrine re- 
ceived, for the very reason that it was incomprehensible. 

“The means used by Plotinus and his pupils to disseminate the 
new philosophy were the same as those used at the end of the 
Eighteenth Century by Mesmer and Cagliostro in France to mys- 


13 Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xxxvii, 
London and New York, 1898, vol. iv, p. 75. 


140 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


tify the decayed nobility, and by Rosicrucians, spirit charmers, 
and the like in Germany to mystify a pious Prussian king. Ploti- 
nus practiced magic, summoned spirits to appear before him, and 
even stooped to the activity practiced in this country only by a 
despised class of persons, that of revealing those guilty of petty 
thefts, when asked by his acquaintances. 

“Plotinus’ writings were also conceived in the prophetic man- 
ner; for according to the testimony of his most famous pupil he 
set down his alleged inspirations without ever deigning to glance 
at them again, or even to correct the language. The masterpieces 
of the ancient Greeks had not been written thus! Even the most 
rudimentary rules of thought, what we are accustomed to call 
‘method’, is lacking both in the writings and in the oral discourses 
of this man, who demanded of everyone who would attain philo- 
sophical knowledge a sloughing off of his own nature or an emer- 
gence from the natural state of thought and feeling, as his first 
condition. 

“Tn order to convey an idea of the nature of his teaching and 
of the effect it produced, we need only give a few data concerning 
the contents of his writings. Living with men and among men 
is always represented as sinful and unnatural, while true wisdom 
and bliss consists, according to him, in a complete separation 
from the world of the senses, in meditation and in a brooding and 
dismal isolation of one’s own spirit, and a concentration on higher 
things. . . . This theory of life, which undermines all activity, 
and flies in the face of all experience and of all human relations, 
and which furthermore is expounded with the strongest contempt 
for all those having different views, is accompanied by a purely 
theoretical conception of nature and its laws, based only on 
overheated mental vagaries. Aristotle had based his ideas of 
nature on experience, observation and mathematics; there is not 
a trace of these in Plotinus. Plotinus considered himself to be a 
philosopher illuminated by God; he therefore believed that all 
his knowledge was derived from an internal source of inspiration, 
and that he needed to mount no ladder in order to attain knowl- 
edge, for his pinions bore him over the earth and through all the 
realms of space. ... 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 141 


“Plotinus had three pupils who put in tolerable shape the words 
he had delivered in the form of oracles, and who disseminated 
his teachings as his apostles: Herennius, Amelius, and Porphyrius. 
All three were quite talented, and Longinus mentions the latter 
two as the only philosophers of his time whose writings are read- 
able, although Longinus was in most matters very hostile to any 
philosophy that turned its back on life and sound reason. 

“But we may best judge how low was their love of truth by the 
biography of Plotinus written by Porphyrius. Porphyrius relates 
the silliest stories of his lord and master, and as Porphyrius had 
too much sense to believe them himself, he must have fabricated 
them intentionally and knowingly in order to raise the credit of 
Plotinus’ oracular dicta’’.** 


c. The Resort to Lying 


Duplicity is 4 necessary complement to credulity and the love 
of miracles. ‘Thus far we have given only examples in which the 
reporters relate miracles concerning the deceased, but there was 
no lack of persons who also reported the greatest marvels con- 
cerning themselves, such as Apion of Alexandria, the Jew-baiter, 
“the ‘world’s clapper’ (cymbalum mundi), as the Emperor 
Tiberius called him, full of big words and still bigger lies, of the 
most assured omniscience and unlimited faith in himself, con- 
versant, if not with men, at any rate with their worthlessness, a 
celebrated master of discourse as of the art of misleading, ready 
for action, witty, unabashed, and unconditionally loyal”’.*° 

Men of this stamp were usually loyal—meaning servile. This 
loyal scamp had the impudence to conjure up Homer from the 
underworld in order to question him concerning his place of birth. 
And he even maintained that the spirit of the poet had appeared 
to him and answered his question, but bound him to secrecy! 

A more outrageous swindler was Alexander of Abonuteichos 
(born about 105 a.D., died about 175 A.p.), who practiced magic 
with the crudest means, for instance, slaughtered animals and 


14 Weltgeschichte, 1846, vol. iv, 452 ff. 
15 Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian, 
London, 1886, vol. ii, pp. 193, 194. 


142 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


hollow images of the gods, in which humans were concealed. 
This man established an oracle which would give information 
for a fee, and Lucian estimates the income from this business 
at about $15,000 a year. He even succeeded in obtaining an 
influence through the Consular Rutilianus over the “philo- 
sophical” Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The swindler died rich and 
full of honors, and a statue erected in his memory is said to have 
given forth prophecies even after his death. Another well man- 
aged deception seems to have been the following. 

“Tio Cassius relates that in the year 220 a sfirit, which called 
itself that of Alexander the Great, exactly resembled him in form 
and features and wore a similar dress, marched with a retinue 
of 400 persons clothed as Bacchants, from the Danube to the 
Bosporus, where it disappeared: no official ventured to stop it, 
but on the contrary lodging and food were everywhere provided at 
the public expense.’’** 

Our heroes of the fourth dimension and even the more material 
Captain of Kopenick must hide their faces in shame when they 
think of these achievements.*’ 

But not only swindlers and mountebanks engaged in the prac- 
tice of conscious lying and deception; even serious thinkers, and 
other persons who meant well, made frequent use of it. 

The historical literature of antiquity was never characterized 
by an excess of severely critical method; it was not yet a science 
in the narrower sense of the word, it was not yet used for the in- 
vestigation of the laws of the evolution of society, but for peda- 
gogical and political purposes. Its object was to edify the reader, 
or to prove to him the correctness of the political tendencies 
favored by the historian. The great deeds of their ancestors 
must be made to elevate the minds of the coming generations and 
inspire them to similar actions—this made a work of history 
merely an echo in prose of the heroic epic. 

But the later generations had also to be taught from the ex- 
periences of their ancestors what they themselves were to do and 


16 Friedlander, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 306. 

17 Tn 1906, a poor laborer named Voigt, in the town of K6penick, near Berlin, 
disguised himself as a military officer and secured the aid of several soldiers in 
robbing the town treasury at the City Hall—TransLaror. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 143 


not do. It is easy to understand that many a historian, particu- 
larly when the purpose of edification and inspiration was the 
chief one, was not over-delicate in the selection and criticism of 
his sources; he may even have permitted himself, in the interest 
of his artistic effect, to fill out gaps in his tale with the aid of the 
imagination. Each historian considered it to be particularly his 
privilege to improvise freely the speeches which he had his char- 
acters deliver. But the classical historians took pains not to be 
consciously and intentionally misleading in their depiction of the 
activity of the persons they treated. They had to be all the more 
careful in avoiding this fault since they were treating a public 
political activity, which made their records subject to a close 
checking up. 

But with the decline of ancient society, the task of the writer 
of history changed. The people ceased to demand political in- 
struction, for politics was becoming more and more indifferent, 
more and more repulsive to them. Nor did they continue to re- 
quire examples of manly courage and devotion to country; what 
they wanted was amusement, a new stimulus for their jaded 
nerves, gossip and sensations, miracles. One slight inaccuracy 
more or less did not matter to the reader. Furthermore the 
checking up of recorded facts became more difficult, for private 
destinies were now in the foreground of the reader’s interest, 
events which had not taken place in the full light of publicity. 
Literary history resolved itself more and more, on the one hand 
into narrations of scandals, and on the other hand into outrageous 
exaggerations of the Munchausen type. 

This new tendency became manifest in Greek literature about 
the time of Alexander the Great, concerning whose deeds Alex- 
ander’s courtier Onesikritos wrote a book that simply swarms 
with lies and exaggerations. But there is only a single step be- 
tween lying and forgery. This step was accomplished by 
Euemeros, who in the Third Century brought home inscriptions 
from India, which he alleged were of great age, but which the 
good man had fabricated himself. 

But this excellent method was not limited to literary history 
alone. We have seen how the interest in the things of this world 


144 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


was gradually dying down among students of philosophy, while 
that in the next world was becoming stronger. But how should 
a philosopher convince his pupils that his views of the hereafter 
were more than mere imaginings? The simplest means of pro- 
ducing such conviction was of course to invent a witness who was 
represented as having come back from the country “from whose 
bourne no traveler returns”, and reporting on its general condi- 
tions. Even Plato did not scorn to use this device, as we have 
seen in the case of the excellent Pamphylian whom we have 
already mentioned. 

Furthermore, the decreasing interest in the natural sciences, 
and their displacement by a meditation on ethics, involved also 
an abandonment of the critical spirit which aims to test the cor- 
rectness of each proposition by actual experience, and a further 
weakening of the intellectual stamina of the various individuals, 
thus producing an increased desire to find a support in the person 
of some great man. Men were moved now not by actual proofs 
but by authorities, and anyone desiring to produce an impression 
upon them had to see to it that he was supported by the neces- 
sary authorities. If these authorities did not provide the required 
passages, it became necessary to doctor them a little, or to create 
one’s authorities out of whole cloth. We have already had occa- 
sion to note authorities of this kind in the cases of Daniel and 
Pythagoras. Jesus was such an authority, also his apostles, 
Moses, the Sibyls, etc. 

The writer did not always take the pains to write a whole book 
under the false name; often it was sufficient to interpolate a single 
sentence in a genuine work by a recognized authority, making 
this sentence express the writer’s own beliefs, and thus conquer- 
ing this authority for his argument. This was rendered easier 
by the fact that printing had not yet been invented. Books cir- 
culated only in written copies, made either by their owner or for 
him, by a slave, if the owner was wealthy enough to support a 
slave for this purpose. Besides, there were publishers who made 
their slaves copy books, which were then sold with great profit. 
It was very easy in such a copy to omit a sentence that seemed 
inconvenient, or to insert another that was needed, particularly 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 145 


if the author had already died, which, in those careless and credu- 
lous days, made the likelihood of a protest very remote. Later 
copyists would then see to it that this forgery was preserved to 
posterity. 

The Christians found this method of procedure easier than 
did the other historians. Whoever the first teachers and organ- 
izers of the Christian congregations may have been, it is certain 
that they rose from the lowest strata of the population, that they 
could not write and left no written records. Their doctrines 
were at first disseminated only by word of mouth. If any of 
their adherents would invoke the authority of the earliest teachers 
of the congregation, in any discussion that might arise, it was 
difficult to contradict him, unless he outraged tradition too 
crudely. Soon the most varied versions of the words of “the 
master” and his apostles were necessarily in circulation. And 
in view of the heated state of conflict which prevailed in the 
Christian congregations at the outset, these various versions were 
first advanced not for the purpose of an objective historical rec- 
ord, but for utilization in controversy, being later recorded and 
collected in the Gospels. The later copyists and rewriters were 
also animated chiefly by controversial aims, which caused them 
to strike out an inconvenient sentence here and insert another in 
its place in order to be able to use the entire record as a proof 
of the fact that Christ or his apostles had advocated one view or 
another. This polemical tendency is encountered at every step 
in an examination of the Gospels. 

But soon the Christians no longer contented themselves with 
adapting and forging their own sacred writings in this manner, 
as their needs demanded. This method was too convenient not 
to be applied also to other, to “pagan” authors, as soon as there 
was a sufficient number of educated persons among the Christians 
to cause some weight to be given to prominent writers outside 
the Christian world; when there was a sufficient number of such 
persons, it became worth while to have special fabricated copies 
prepared for them, which were greeted with satisfaction by them 
and circulated further. Many of these forgeries have been pre- 
served to the present day. 


146 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


One such forgery has already been mentioned, namely, 
Josephus’ testimony on Jesus. The next writer, with Tacitus, 
to speak of the Christians as their contemporary, is the Younger 
Pliny, who wrote a letter concerning them to Trajan, at the time 
when Pliny was Propretor of Bithynia (probably 111-113 A.D.), 
which has been preserved in the collection of his letters.** In 
this letter, Pliny asks for instructions’ as to what he shall do 
with the Christians in his province, concerning whom he knows no 
evil report, but who cause all the temples to be empty. This 
view of the innocence of the Christians does not harmonize well 
with the opinion of Pliny’s friend Tacitus, who emphasizes their 
“hatred for the entire human race’. It is equally striking for 
us to learn that Christianity was already so widespread in 
Bithynia under Trajan, that it was capable of emptying the tem- 
ples, ‘‘which had already long been desolate, whose solemnities 
had long been in disuse, whose sacrificial beasts rarely found a 
purchaser”. We should have been inclined to suppose that such 
conditions would have aroused as much attention as would be 
given now to the fact, if it should so happen, that only Socialist 
votes were being cast in Berlin. There would surely have been 
a general commotion. But Pliny does not hear of the existence 
of the Christians until someone denounces them. This and other 
reasons make us assume that this letter is a Christian forgery. 
Semler, as early as 1788, already assumed that this entire letter 
of Pliny was invented by a Christian at a later date, for the mag- 
nification of Christianity. But Bruno Bauer is of the opinion 
that the letter was really written by Pliny, was not originally 
at all flattering to the Christians, and therefore had been ‘fixed 
up” by a later Christian copyist. 

These forgeries became more impudent when the Teutonic 
barbarians inundated the Roman Empire in the period of the 
great migrations. ‘These new masters of the world were simple 
peasants, full of peasant cunning to be sure, and sober and sophis- 
ticated enough in things that were not too deep for them. With 
all their simplicity they were less thirsty for miracles and less 
credulous than the heirs of the ancient civilization, but of reading 

18C, Plinii Cecilit Epistolarum libri decem, Book x, Letter 97. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 147 


and writing they knew nothing. These arts became the privilege 
of the Christian clergy, which was now the only cultured class. 
The clergy had no need to fear that its forgeries in the interest 
of the Church would encounter criticism, and so these forgeries 
multiplied more luxuriantly than ever before, and they were no 
longer limited, as before, to matters of doctrine, no longer served 
only in the discussion of theoretical, technical or organizational 
disputes, but now became a means of acquiring property, or 
legally justifying an accomplished seizure of property. The most 
outrageous of these forgeries surely were the Constantine Dona- 
tion and Isidor’s Decretals, both of which were manufactured in 
the Eighth Century. In the former document, Constantine (306- 
337 A.D.) hands over to the Popes the unlimited and eternal 
dominion of Rome, Italy and all the provinces to the West. 
Isidor’s Decretals are a collection of ecclesiastical laws ostensibly 
gathered by the Spanish Bishop Isidorus in the beginning of the 
Seventh Century, which proclaim the sole authority of the Pope 
in the Church. 

This great mass of forgeries is not the least important of the 
causes that make the history of the origin of Christianity so ob- 
scure to this day. Many of these forgeries are not hard to de- 
tect; many were exposed centuries ago; for instance, Laurentius 
Valla revealed in 1440 that the Constantine Donation was a for- 
gery. But it is not equally easy to detect the existence of a 
grain of truth in one of these forgeries, and to fix the outline of 
this truth. 

The picture that we are recording is not a pleasant one: general 
decay in every quarter, economic, political, and also scientific and 
moral. The ancient Romans and Greeks had considered the full 
and harmonious development of manhood in the best sense of 
the word as a virtue. Virtus and Arete had signified bravery 
and endurance, but also manly pride, sacrifice and unselfish de- 
votion to the common weal. But as society sank deeper into 
bondage, submission became the supreme virtue, and from it were 
derived all the noble qualities to which we have devoted our 
attention: aversion to the common weal and concentration on 
individual interests, cowardice and lack of self-confidence, long- 


148 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ing for redemption by an emperor or a God, not by one’s own 
strength or the strength of one’s class; self-debasement before 
the powerful, priestly impudence toward inferiors; blasé indif- 
ference and disgust with life, yielding to a yearning for sensations, 
for marvels; hysteria and ecstasy, together with hypocrisy, lying 
and forgery. Such is the picture afforded us by the Imperial 
Era, and its traits are reflected in the product of the era, which 
is Christianity. 


d. Humanitarianism 


But the champions of Christianity will say that this picture 
is one-sided and therefore untrue. We must admit that the Chris- 
tians were only human beings, and could not entirely protect them- 
selves against the degrading influences of their surroundings, but 
this is only one side of Christianity. On the other hand, we must 
also observe that it expounds a morality which is far superior 
to that of antiquity, a sublime humanity, an infinite mercy, toward 
everything bearing the human form, the lowly and the exalted, 
strangers and comrades in the clan, enemy as well as friend; that 
it preaches a fraternization of all classes and races. This teach- 
ing is not to be explained on the basis of the times in which Chris- 
tianity arose; it is all the more remarkable for being taught in 
a period of the most profound moral corruption; the materialistic 
interpretation of history here fails us; we are here dealing with 
a phenomenon that can only be explained by the sublimity of 
an individuality that is completely independent of the conditions 
of time and space, a God-Man, or to use the modern cant term, a 
Superman. 

That is the way our “idealists” put it. 

But what are the facts? Let us first consider the charity 
toward the poor and the humanity toward slaves; are these two 
phenomena really to be found only in Christianity? It is true 
that we do not find much charity in classic antiquity, and the 
reason is not far to seek: charity implies the existence of poverty 
on a vast scale. The intellectual life of antiquity was deeply 
rooted in communistic conditions, and in a common ownership of 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 149 


the clan lands, of the community, of the household, which gave 
their members a right to their common products and their com- 
mon means of production. The giving of alms was rarely 
necessary. ) 

The reader should not confuse hospitality with charity. Hos- 
pitality was a very general trait in ancient times; but it is a rela- 
tion between equals, while charity implies a social inequality. 
Hospitality rejoices both guest and host; but charity exalts him 
who gives and debases and humiliates him who receives. 

In the course of events various large cities began to have a 
mass proletariat, as we have seen. But this proletariat either 
possessed or achieved political power, and made use of the latter 
in order to conquer for itself a share in the foodstuffs which were 
flowing into the storehouses of the wealthy and of the state as a 
product of slave labor and the exploitation of the provinces. 
Thanks to democracy and its political power, even these prole- 
tarians did not need charity. Charity implies not only a great 
wretchedness of the masses, but also a proletariat without political 
rights and powers, conditions that did not obtain on a large scale 
before the Imperial Era. It is not surprising that the notion of 
charity should only then have begun to dominate Roman society. 
But it was not a result of the superhuman morality of Christianity. 

In the early days of their rule, the Caesars considered it to be 
still advisable to buy up by means of bread and games not only 
the army, but also the proletariat of the capital. Nero particu- 
larly was very successful in this practice. In many of the large 
provincial cities this method was also used to pacify the lower 
strata of the population. 

But this procedure did not last long. The increasing impov- 
erishment of society forced a retrenchment in the national 
expenditures, which the Caesars naturally applied first to the pro- 
letariat, no longer feared by them. Probably the desire to rem- 
edy the increasing lack of labor power also decreased their gen- 
erosity toward the proletariat. If there were no gifts of grain, 
the proletarians capable of physical labor had to look for work, 
and perhaps bound themselves over to the great landed proprie- 


150 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


tors as coloni or tenants. But precisely this lack of sufficient 
labor caused the rise of new forms of public gifts. 

In the Imperial Era, all the ancient social organizations are 
disintegrating, not only the clans, but also the households of the 
larger families. Each man thinks only of himself, family ties 
are dissolved as well as political ties, the readiness to sacrifice 
oneself for one’s relatives becomes extinct, as does also the devo- 
tion to community and to state. Orphaned children suffered par- 
ticularly from this condition. To be without parents now made 
them defenseless; there was no one who would look after them. 
The number of children having no relatives ready to support them 
was further increased by the fact that the general indigence and 
the lowering of the spirit of sacrifice was causing an increasing 
number of persons to evade family burdens. Some achieved this 
by not marrying, by resorting to prostitutes only; male prosti- 
tution, by the way, was in a flourishing condition; others, although 
married, sought to avoid the begetting of children. Both these 
practices naturally aided in the depopulation of the country, in 
producing a lack of laborers, and therefore increasing the general 
poverty. And many persons having children found it most con- 
venient to dispose of them by abandoning them. This excellent 
practice assumed enormous proportions; no prohibitions were of 
any avail; two burning questions became ever more urgent: the 
care of children not supported by relatives, and the care of the 
children of the poor, still living with their parents; these questions 
necessarily received much attention from the early Christians. 
The latter were constantly concerned over the question of the 
support of orphans. Not only compassion, but also the need for 
labor power and soldiers, led to an effort to assure the bringing up 
of orphans, foundlings, and proletarian children. 

Under Augustus we already find efforts being made in this 
direction; in the Second Century of our era they begin to assume 
practical form. The Emperors Nerva and Trajan were the first 
to establish such institutions in the Italian provinces, by having 
the state either purchase a number of estates and sublease them, 
or transfer them on mortgages. The yield in the rent or interest 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 151 


on mortgages was to be used for the training of poor children, par- 
ticularly orphans.*® 

Hadrian, immediately after his accession, extended this insti- 
tution, which had been planned under Trajan for about 5,000 
children; later emperors developed it further, but this national 
charity was also accompanied by communal charity, as it had been 
preceded by private charity. The oldest private boarding insti- 
tution of which we have any information dates from the time of 
Augustus. Helvius Basila, who had held the pretorship, be- 
queathed $22,000 to the citizens of Atina in Latium for supplying 
grain to a number of children, the number being unfortunately 
not stated.*° 

Later, under Trajan, numerous such institutions are mentioned. 
A rich lady, Celia Macrina, of Tarracina, on the death of her 
son, donated a million sesterces (more than $50,000), from the 
interest of which 100 boys and girls were to be supported; the 
Younger Pliny founded a boarding establishment in the year 97 
in his native city of Comum (now Como), which was to receive 
the annual income of an estate valued at 500,000 sesterces, and 
devote it to the nourishing of poor children. He also established 
schools, libraries, etc. 

Of course all these foundations did not succeed in counter- 
acting the depopulation of the empire; for this depopulation was 
due to causes that lay too deep in the economic conditions; and 
therefore it increased as the economic decay progressed. The 
general impoverishment advanced to the point of consuming the 
resources necessary for continuing this child welfare work; pov- 
erty bankrupted not only the feeding institutions, but the state 
itself. Concerning the development of the feeding institutions 
we learn from Miller: 

“Their life may be traced for almost 180 years. Hadrian im- 
proved the allotments to the children. Antonius Pius appropri- 
ated new sums for this purpose. In 145 A.D. the boys and girls 
of Cupramontano, a city in Picenum, who were his beneficiaries, 


_ 19Cf. B. Matthias, Rémische Alimentarinstitutionen und Agrarwirtschaft. 
Jahrbuch fiir Nationalékonomie und Statistik, 1885, vol. i, pp. 503 ff. 
20A, Miller, Jugendfiirsorge in der romischen Kaiserzeit, 1903, p. 21. 


LOR FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


erected a grateful epitaph to him, as did those of Sestinum in 
Umbria in 161. A similar dedication at Ficulea in Latium tes- 
tifies to the similar activity of Marcus Aurelius. The latter es- 
tablishment seems to have reached its culmination early in the 
reign of this emperor; from then on the general disintegration of 
the Empire was paralleled in the history of the institution. 
Marcus Aurelius, owing to the embarrassments which war was 
constantly putting upon him, and which even forced him to auc- 
tion off the crown jewels, insignia, and other valuables of the Im- 
perial Dynasty, seems to have gone so far as to confiscate the 
endowment funds of this institution and guarantee the payment 
of interest from the State Treasury. Under Commodus, the 
Treasury was unable for nine years to fulfill this obligation, and 
Pertinax, unable to pay the arrears, repudiated them. But it 
seems that the fortunes of the institution later improved. An 
official in charge of it is still mentioned in the Third Century; 
but its existence terminated about that time. We no longer hear 
of it under Constantine.” ** 

Increasing poverty might wipe out the charitable institutions, 
but it could not destroy the concept of charity, which necessarily 
became stronger and stronger in view of the increasing wretched- 
ness. But this notion is by no means a characteristic of Chris- 
tianity alone; Christianity shares it with its epoch, which resorted 
to it not because of the moral sublimity of the times, but because 
of their economic decay. 

The appreciation and admiration for charity also resulted in 
the rise of another less amiable quality: that of boasting of the 
alms one had given. Pliny, already mentioned above, is a good 
example. All our information concerning his charitable insti- 
tutions is derived from him alone: he described them in great 
detail in books that were intended for publication. When we 
behold Pliny nursing his sublime emotions and evincing immense 
admiration for his own nobility of character, it seems to us that 
this is less an indication of the moral greatness of the “Golden 
Age” of the Roman Empire, of its most happy period, as Gre- 
gorovius and most of his colleagues term it,’ than of the silly 

21 Op. cit., pp. 7, 8. 22 Der Kaiser Hadrian, 1884. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 153 


vanity of that era, an edifying counterpart of its priestly arro- 
gance and its pious hypocrisy. 

The severest censure that has been spoken of Pliny, as far as 
we know, is Niebuhr’s, which accuses him of “childish vanity” 
and “dishonest humility’’.** 

As in the case of charity, we have been told that the humane 
treatment of slaves is peculiar to Christianity. 

We must first of all point out that Christianity, at least in the 
form under which it became the state religion, never in any way 
undertook to combat slavery as a principle. It never exerted 
any influence toward the abolition of slavery. If the exploitation 
of slaves for purposes of profit ceased in the time of Christianity, 
the reasons for this had nothing whatever to do with religious 
conceptions. We have already had occasion to observe these rea- 
sons: Rome’s military decline was cutting off the cheap supplies 
of slaves and thus making the exploitation of slaves unprofitable. 
But the keeping of /uxury slaves on the other hand continued to 
be practiced until long after the Roman Empire; in fact, simul- 
taneously with Christianity, there arose in the Roman world a 
new variety of slaves, the Eunuchs, who played an important 
part particularly under the Christian emperors, beginning with 
Constantine. They are already found, however, at the court of 
Claudius, Nero’s father.** 

But the free proletarians themselves never thought of doing 
away with slavery. They sought to improve their condition by 
increasing their bleedings of the rich and of the state without 
doing any work themselves, which was impossible except on the 
basis of the exploitation of slaves. 

It is an interesting fact that in the communistic state of the 
future which Aristophanes derides in his Ekklesiazuse, slavery 
continues to exist. The difference ceases between those who have 
possessions and those who have none, but only in the case of 
freemen; everything becomes common property for them, includ- 
ing the slaves, who continue the business of production. Of 


23 Romische Geschichte, 1845, vol. v, p. 312. 
24 Suetonius, Tiberius, Claudius, Drusus, chap. xxviii, 44. 


154 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


course Aristophanes intends this as a joke, but it is fully in accord 
with ancient thought. 

We find a similar attitude expressed in a pamphlet concerning 
the sources of the general Attic prosperity, written in the Fourth 
Century B.c., to which Pohlmann calls attention in his history, 
already quoted in this work. 

This polemic demands, as Pohlmann puts it, ‘an immense ex- 
tension of the general economy of the state for purposes of traffic 
and production,” and particularly, that the state purchase slaves 
for working the silver mines. The number of these state slaves 
is to be increased to such an extent that each citizen will ulti- 
mately have three slaves. The state will then be in a position 
to grant each of its citizens at least the minimum comforts of 
life.”* 

Professor Pohlmann declares that this fine proposal is charac- 
teristic of ‘“‘collectivistic radicalism” and “democratic socialism’, 
which aims at nationalizing all the means of production in the 
interest of the proletariat. In truth it is characteristic of the 
peculiar attitude of the ancient proletariat, and its interest in 
the preservation of slavery; but Pohlmann’s understanding of 
this demand is characteristic of the narrowness of bourgeois learn- 
ing, which considers every nationalization of property, even prop- 
erty in men, as an example of “collectivism”, every measure 
adopted in the interest of the proletariat as an example of “demo- 
cratic socialism”, regardless of whether this proletariat is to be 
counted as an exploiter or as the exploited. 

An indication of the fact that the proletarians were interested 
in preserving slavery is to be found in the fact that even the 
revolutionary practice of the Roman proletarians never presented 
an opposition in principle to the ownership of human beings. The 
slaves, in turn, are occasionally ready to be used in putting down 
a proletarian insurrection. Slaves led by aristocrats dealt the 
death blow to the proletarian movement under Caius Gracchus. 
Fifty years later, Roman proletarians led by Marcus Crassus 
struck down the rebellious slaves under Spartacus. 

Quite independent of the idea of a general abolition of slavery, 


25 Pohlmann, Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus, vol. ii, p. 252 ff. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 155 


which no one took seriously, is the manner in which slaves were 
treated. And here we must admit that a great improvement in 
the views concerning slavery, a recognition of the human rights 
of the slaves, is indeed evinced in Christianity, which is in sharp 
contrast with the wretched situation of the slaves at the begin- 
ning of the Imperial Period, when life and limb of the slave, as 
we have seen, were subject to every caprice of his master, who 
often made the most cruel use of this privilege. 

Christianity, indeed, sharply opposed this way of regarding 
slaves. But this would not be equivalent to saying that Chris- 
tianity thus was in opposition to the spirit of its times, that it 
stood alone in this attitude on slaves. 

What was the class that claimed the right of a limitless mal- 
treatment and execution of slaves? Of course it was the class 
of the rich landed proprietors, particularly the aristocracy. 

But the democracy, the lower classes having no slaves them- 
selves, were not as much interested in the privilege of maltreating 
slaves as were the great slave owners. To be sure, as long as 
the class of petty peasants, themselves owning slaves, or at least 
the traditions of this class, prevailed among the Roman people, 
the latter did not feel impelled to defend the slaves. 

But a change in sentiment was slowly being prepared, not as 
the consequence of an improved moral teaching, but as the conse- 
quence of the altered composition of the Roman proletariat. 
Fewer and fewer freeborn Romans, particularly petty peasants, 
were found among the people, while the number of freed slaves, 
also participating in the rights of Roman citizens, was increasing 
enormously; under the Imperial Period the majority of the popu- 
lation of Rome were of the latter class. Slaves were freed for 
many reasons. Many a man who had no children, which was 
frequently the case, owing to the desire to escape the burdens of 
marriage and offspring, was induced, by caprice or good-nature, 
to provide in his will for the liberation of his slaves after his 
death. Others sometimes would liberate a slave during their own 
lives, as a reward for special services or through vanity, for any- 
one who could afford to liberate many slaves came to be regarded 
as a rich man. Others were liberated by political calculation, 


156 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


for the freedman usually remained dependent on his master, as 
his client, in spite of his political rights. The slave, therefore, 
increased the political influence of his master. Also, slaves were 
permitted to save money and buy their freedom with their sav- 
ings, and many a master was driving a very good bargain when 
a slave, after having been worked to a skeleton, would buy his 
freedom at a price permitting the master to purchase a new one, 
whose strength was as yet intact. 

With the increase of the number of slaves in the population, 
the number of freedmen also increased. The free proletariat, 
however, was being recruited more and more from the s/ave class, 
and not from the peasants. But this proletariat was also po- 
litically opposed to the slave-holding aristocracy and attempted 
to wrest political rights and powers from it, which meant the 
prospect of an attractive economic gain. It is therefore no cause 
for surprise to find a sympathy with the slaves beginning to make 
itself felt among the Roman democracy just at the time when the 
excesses of the slave-holders toward their human work-horses 
had reached their culmination. 

But another factor must also be taken into account. 

When the Caesars attained power, their households, like that 
of any distinguished Roman, were administered by slaves and 
freedmen. Degraded as the Romans had become, a freeborn 
citizen would nevertheless have considered it beneath his dignity 
to consent to perform personal services even for the most power- 
ful of his fellow-citizens. The household of the Caesars now be- 
came the Imperial Court, their domestic servants became imperial 
courtiers. A new mechanism for administering the state was de- 
veloped from among them, in addition to the staff inherited from 
the Republic. And the former mechanism was more and more 
entrusted with the actual business of state, and ruled the state, 
while the offices handed down from the Republican period be- 
came more and more empty titles, perhaps satisfactory to per- 
sonal vanity, but not involving real power. 

The slaves and freedmen in the Imperial Court became the 
rulers of the world, and through their embezzlements, extortions 
and bribes, its most successful exploiters. Friedlander describes 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 157 


this condition excellently in his splendid book, Roman Life and 
Manners under the Early Empire, which we have cited more than 
once: ‘The wealth which came to them by reason of their 
privileged position was a chief source of their strength. Ata time 
when the riches of the freedmen had become proverbial, there 
surely were not many persons who could compare with these im- 
perial servants. Narcissus had 400,000,000 sesterces ($21,000,- 
000), the greatest fortune known to the ancient world; Pallas, 
300,000,000 ($16,000,000). Callistus, Epaphroditus, Dorypho- 
rus and others had treasures of hardly smaller size. When the 
Emperor Claudius once complained of the low state of the imperial 
finances, Roman gossip had it that he would have a superfluity 
if his two freedmen (Narcissus and Pallas) would take him as a 
third partner.” 

In fact, many an emperor found an excellent source of income 
in the practice of obliging rich slaves and freedmen to share with 
him the proceeds of their embezzlements and extortions. 

“Owing to their possession of such enormous wealth, the im- 
perial freedmen exceeded the Roman aristocrats in luxury and 
splendor. Their palaces were the most magnificent in Rome. 
That of Claudius’ eunuch Posides was more brilliant than the 
Capitol, according to Juvenal, and the rarest and costliest things 
the earth could show adorned it in lavish profusion. .. . But 
the imperial freedmen also adorned Rome and the other cities in 
the monarchy with splendid and useful structures. Cleander, the 
powerful freedman of Commodus, utilized a proportion of his 
immense wealth in the construction of houses, baths, and other 
establishments useful to individuals as well as to entire cities.” 

This sudden prosperity of the many slaves and former slaves 
was the more striking when compared with the simultaneous finan- 
cial decay of the land-owning aristocracy. It has a parallel today 
in the rise of the Jewish financial aristocracy. And just as the 
bankrupt aristocrats by birth at the present day at the bottom 
of their hearts hate and despise the rich Jews, but flatter them 
when they need them, so also was the treatment of the imperial 
slaves and freedmen. 

“The highest aristocracy of Rome would outvie each other in 


158 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


their efforts to do honor to the powerful servants of the emperor, 
no matter how sincerely these offspring of ancient and famous 
families despised and abhorred these persons of hated origin who 
were indelibly stamped with the mark of slavery and who in 
more than one respect were legally of lower station than the free- 
born beggar.” 

Socially, the position of the imperial servants was a very mod- 
est one, quite subordinate to that of the highborn dignitaries. 

“But in reality the relation was quite a different one, in fact 
was often exactly the opposite, and the infinitely despised ‘slaves’ 
had the satisfaction that ‘free men and nobles admired and en- 
vied them,’ that Rome’s most distinguished families humiliated 
themselves profoundly before them; few dared treat them as 
servants. . . . Crude flattery devises a family tree for Pallas 
which traces his origin from the King of Arcadia of the same 
name, and a descendant of the Scipios proposed a vote of thanks 
in the Senate because this scion of a royal house had subordinated 
his ancient nobility to the weal of the state and condescended to 
become a prince’s servant. On the proposal of one of the consuls 
(in the year 52 A.D.) he was offered the pretorian insignia and 
a sizable purse of money (15,000,000 sesterces).”’ Pallas ac- 
cepted only the former. 

The Senate hereupon adopted a resolution of thanks to Pallas. 
“This decree was publicly exhibited on a bronze tablet by the side 
of a statue of Julius Caesar in full armor, and the possessor of 
300,000,000 sesterces was lauded as a pattern of austere unself- 
ishness. L. Vitellius, father of the emperor of the same name, a 
man in very high position, although his virtuosity in rascality 
aroused comment even in those days, worshiped among his domes- 
tic gods golden images of Pallas and Narcissus. .. . 

“But nothing can so definitely indicate the position of these 
former slaves than the fact that they were permitted to marry 
the daughters of aristocratic families, even those related to the 
imperial house, at a time when the pride of the nobility in its 
ancient lineage and in a long series of illustrious forebears was 
very great.’ 7° 


6 Friedlander, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 43-48. Routledge edition, London, 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 159 


The Roman citizens, masters of the world, had therefore de- 
scended to being governed by those who were or had been slaves, 
and to bow their heads before them. 

It is manifest how great must have been the reaction of this 
condition on the current views of the times. The aristocrats 
might hate the slaves the more, as they were obliged to yield the 
more to them; the popular masses were induced to respect the 
slaves, and the slaves themselves began to feel their oats. 

On the other hand, Caesarism had risen in the struggle which 
democracy, itself consisting in great part of former slaves, was 
waging against the aristocracy of great slave-owners. The latter, 
not so easily to be purchased as the penniless masses of the 
people, were the only serious competition which the rising 
Caesars had to meet in fighting for the state power; the great 
slave-owners were the Republican opposition in the imperial 
realm, if we may speak of any such opposition at all. But the 
slaves and freedmen were the emperor’s most faithful supporters. 

All these influences necessarily produced an attitude more or 
less friendly to the slaves, not only in the proletariat, but in the 
imperial court, and in the circles which followed the court; this 
attitude was very emphatically expressed both by the court 
philosophers as well as by the proletarian street preachers. 

We shall not take up any lengthy quotations expressing such 
opinions, but shall simply report one very characteristic incident: 
the clemency of the tyrant Nero toward slaves and freedmen. 
Nero was constantly at odds with the aristocratic Senate, which, 
while it was very subservient toward individual powerful freed- 
men, nevertheless always demanded the severest measures with 
regard to slaves and freedmen in general. Thus the Senate in 
the year 56 a.p. demanded that the “arrogance” of the freedmen 
be broken by granting the former owners of slaves the right to 
deprive of their freedom such freedmen as had acted “impu- 
dently,” z.e., not abjectly enough, toward these former owners. 
Nero emphatically opposed this motion. He pointed out how 
high was the status now attained by the freedmen, many knights 
and even senators having come from their ranks, and recalled 


160 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the ancient Roman principle that whatever might be the differ- 
ences between the various classes of the people, liberty must re- 
main the common possession of all. Nero proposed a substitute 
motion that the rights of the freedmen be not curtailed, and 
forced the cowardly Senate to pass his motion. 

In the year 61 the situation became more hazardous. Pedanius 
Secundus, Prefect of the City, had been murdered by one of his 
slaves. According to the ancient aristocratic law, this deed re- 
quired retribution in the form of the execution of all the slaves 
present in the house at the time of the murder, in this case not 
less than 400 persons, including women and children. But public 
opinion was in favor of a more lenient procedure. The masses 
of the people were decidedly in favor of the slaves; it seemed as 
if the Senate itself would be carried away by the general frame 
of mind. Then Caius Cassius, Republican opposition leader in 
the Senate, a descendant of one of Caesar’s murderers, took the 
floor, and admonished the Senate in a fiery speech not to be in- 
timidated, and to yield no ground to mercy. The scum of hu- 
manity could be kept in check only by fear. This firebrand’s 
speech was very effective; no one in the Senate contradicted him; 
even Nero was forced to yield, considering it wisest to keep his 
peace. ‘The slaves were all executed. But when the Republican 
aristocrats, emboldened by this victory, introduced an additional 
motion in the Senate to deport from Italy all the freedmen 
who had ever lived under the same roof with the condemned 
slaves, Nero rose from his seat and declared that though mercy 
and compassion might not be permitted to soften the ancient law, 
the latter should not, however, be aggravated; this caused the 
defeat of the motion. 

Nero went so far as to appoint a special judge, according to 
Seneca, to “investigate maltreatments of slaves by their masters 
and to impose limits upon the cruelty and caprice of the masters 
as well as upon their niggardliness in supplying things to eat.” 
The same emperor decreased the number of gladiatorial com- 
bats, and sometimes insisted, according to Suetonius, that none 
of those participating, not even condemned criminals, be slain. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 161 


We have a similar report concerning Tiberius. The facts cited 
above clearly show how unfruitful is a moralizing or political 
record of history, which considers it to be its task to measure the 
men of the past by the moral and political standards of our day. 
Nero, murderer of his mother and wife, indulgently grants their 
lives to slaves and criminals. The tyrant takes liberty under his 
protection when it is threatened by the Republicans; the insane 
voluptuary practices the virtues of humanity and charity toward 
the saints and martyrs of Christianity, feeds the hungry, gives 
drink to the thirsty, clothes the naked—let the reader recall his 
princely generosity to the Roman proletariat—and espouses the 
cause of the poor and miserable: this historical figure mocks any 
attempt at evaluating it by ethical standards. But difficult and 
foolish though it may be to attempt to ascertain whether Nero 
was at bottom a good man or a rascal, or both, as is commonly 
assumed today, it is nevertheless easy to understand Nero and his 
actions, those that are sympathetic to us as well as those that are 
repellent to us, if we proceed from the standpoint of his epoch 
and his social position. 

The clemency shown by the imperial court, as well as by the 
proletariat, toward the slaves, must have been emphatically 
strengthened by the fact that the slave had ceased to be a cheap 
commodity. On the one hand, the phase of slave labor that had 
always been productive of the most terrible brutalities, namely, 
its exploitation for profit, had come to an end. There remained 
only the luxury slaves who by the very nature of their employ- 
ment usually received better treatment. These slaves became a 
relatively more important element as slaves became rarer and 
dearer, as the loss caused by the untimely death of a slave be- 
came greater, as the slave became more difficult to replace. 

Finally, other influences were working in the same direction: 
the increasing disinclination to military service, which was caus- 
ing an increasing number of city dwellers to recoil from blood- 
shed; also the theory of internationalism, which taught that each 
man must be esteemed without regard to descent, thus obliterating 
the national differences and oppositions. 


162 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


e. Internationalism 


We have already pointed out how great was the development 
of world traffic under the Imperial Era. A system of excellent 
roads united Rome with the provinces and the latter among them- 
selves. Commercial traffic between them was particularly stimu- 
lated by the peace within the Empire which followed upon the 
eternal wars between the various cities and states, and the later 
civil wars which had filled the last few centuries of the history 
of the Republic. Thanks to this condition, the national naval 
power in the Imperial Era was entirely available for combating 
piracy; the latter, never entirely absent from the Mediterranean 
before this, now ceased. Measures, weights and moneys were 
now made uniform over the entire Empire; all these factors 
greatly aided intercourse between its various portions. 

And this intercourse was preéminently personal in character. 
Postal communications, at least as far as private letters are con- 
cerned, were then but slightly developed; anyone having business 
to do abroad found himself obliged, more often than now, to con- 
duct such business personally by traveling to the spot. 

Thus the peoples dwelling around the Mediterranean were 
brought more closely together and their local peculiarities were 
ironed out more and more. To be sure, the entire Empire never 
progressed to the point where it consisted of an altogether uni- 
form mass. It was possible always to distinguish two halves, the 
Western, which spoke Latin, and had a Romanizing influence, and 
the Eastern, which spoke Greek, and had a Hellenizing influence, 
and when the power and the world rule of Rome and its traditions 
were extinguished, when Rome was no longer the capital of the 
Empire, these two sections were separated both in a political as 
well as in a religious sense. 

But in the early days of the Imperial Era there was as yet no 
possibility of a serious attack on the unity of the Empire. This 
was the moment at which the distinction between the subjugated 
nations and the dominant city was disappearing. As the popu- 
lation of Rome lost its virility, the Caesars began no longer to 
consider themselves as the rulers of the entire Empire, as the 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 163 


masters of Rome and the provinces, as the lords of the provinces 
in the name of Rome. Rome—both aristocracy and people—fed 
by the provinces, but unable to produce from its own resources 
enough soldiers and officials to control the provinces, Rome now 
was not an element of power in the Empire of the Caesars, but an 
element of weakness. What Rome took from the provinces did 
not go to the Caesars, and there was no compensating gain to the 
latter. The emperors were therefore impelled by their own inter- 
est to oppose and finally to abolish Rome’s privileged position in 
the Empire. 

The right of Roman citizenship was now generously bestowed 
on the inhabitants of the provinces. We find the latter entering 
the Senate and occupying high office. The Caesars were the first 
to put to a practical application the principle of the equality of all 
men without regard to their descent: all men were equally subject 
to them and were valued by them only in accordance with their 
usefulness, without respect of person, whether they were senators 
or slaves, Romans, Syrians, or Gauls. By the beginning of the 
Third Century, the welding and leveling down of the races had 
progressed so far that Caracalla could afford to bestow rights of 
Roman citizenship on all the inhabitants of the provinces, thus 
simultaneously abolishing all the former differences between the 
former rulers and ruled, all of these differences having as a matter 
of fact long ceased to exist. It was one of the most wretched 
emperors who thus openly expressed one of the most elevated 
thoughts of the epoch, a thought that Christianity claims as its 
own; and the cause which moved the despot to make this decision 
was a wretched one—financial distress. 

Under the Republic, Roman citizens had been free of taxes 
from the time when booty had begun to pour in plentifully from 
the conquered provinces. ‘A‘milius Paullus brought back, after 
defeating Perseus, 300,000,000 sesterces of the Macedonian 
booty, for the Treasury, and from this time on the Roman people 
paid no taxes.” *’ But beginning with the time of Augustus, the 
increasing financial distress had made it necessary gradually to 
restore taxation in the form of new burdens even on Roman citi- 


27 Pliny, Natural History, xxxiii, 17. 


164 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


zens. Caracalla’s “Reform” now made Roman citizens of the 
provincials, in order to oblige them to pay taxes as Roman citizens 
in addition to their regular taxes, the former being simultaneously 
doubled by this imperial financial genius. The other side of the 
story is that he increased the army budget by $15,000,000. We 
are not surprised that his “Financial Reform” was of little use, 
and that he had to resort to other means, of which the most im- 
portant and most audacious was an inflation and forging of money. 

The general disintegration was favorable in another respect to 
the dissemination of ideas of internationalism and the disappear- 
ance of national prejudices. 

The depopulation and corruption in Rome, proceeding so rap- 
idly with the Romans, having ceased to provide soldiers soon also 
ceased to produce suitable officials. We can trace this defect even 
in the emperors. The first emperors were still the descendants 
of ancient Rome’s aristocratic families, of the Julian and the 
Claudian gens. But the third emperor of the Julian dynasty, 
Caligula, was insane, and Nero is an indication of the complete 
bankruptcy of the Roman artistocracy’s power to govern. Nero’s 
successor, Galba, was also of a Roman patrician family, but he 
was followed by Otho, of a distinguished Etruscan family, and 
Vitellius, a plebeian from Apulia. Vespasian, finally, who 
founded the Flavic dynasty, was a plebeian of Sabine origin. But 
the Italic plebeians soon showed themselves to be just as corrupt 
and incapable of government as were the Roman aristocrats, and 
the wretched Domitian, Vespasian’s son, was followed after the 
short reign of Nerva by the Spaniard Trajan. With the latter 
begins the rule of the Spanish emperors, which lasted almost a 
century, until they also gave evidence of political bankruptcy, in 
the person of Commodus. 

Septimius Severus, after the termination of the Spanish line, 
founded an Afro-Syrian dynasty. Already after the murder of 
the last emperor of this line, Alexander Severus, the crown passed 
to a Thracian, of Gothic descent, Maximin, being offered to him 
by the legions, a harbinger of the time when the Goths would rule 
at Rome. The provinces were more and more attacked by the 
general process of decay, and it became more and more necessary 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 165 


to reinvigorate them with barbarian, non-Roman blood, in order 
to infuse new life into the dying Empire, and soldiers now had 
to be sought farther and farther from the main centers of civi- 
lization, and not only soldiers, but even emperors. 

We have already seen slaves ruling as courtiers over free men; 
now we behold provincials, even barbarians, who have been placed 
on the throne as emperors, as creatures entitled to divine worship. 
All the race and class prejudice of pagan antiquity necessarily 
disappeared, and a feeling of equality was bound to assert itself 
more and more. 

Many minds evinced this attitude at an early stage, before the 
conditions above described made it a frequent phenomenon. Thus 
Cicero already writes (De officiis, iii, 6): “He who maintains 
that we must have consideration for our fellow-citizens, but not 
for strangers, is making a breach in the universal ties of the 
human race, and thus fundamentally abolishing charity, gen- 
erosity, kindliness and justice.”” Our ideological historians here 
again confuse cause and effect and attempt to use such sentences 
(which the “pious” find in the Gospels, and the “enlightened” 
in the pagan philosophies) as causes to explain the softening of 
customs and the extension of the concept of the nation to include 
all humanity. The only difficulty is that they are faced with the 
fact that the noble and sublime spirits who are alleged to have 
brought about this revolution in men’s minds are headed by blood- 
thirsty criminals and voluptuaries like Tiberius, Nero, Caracalla, 
as well as a galaxy of foppish fashionable philosophers and swin- 
dlers, like Seneca, the Younger Pliny, Apollonius of Tyana, and 
Plotinus. 

The aristocratic Christians, we must remark in passing, did 
not find it very difficult to adapt themselves to the society of this 
noble band; let us give one example only. Among the many 
female and male concubines kept by the Emperor Commodus 
(180-192 A.D.)—a harem of 300 girls and 300 boys is mentioned 
—the honor of occupying the first place fell to Marcia, a pious 
Christian, the goddaughter of Hyacinthus, Presbyter of the Chris- 
tian congregation at Rome. Her influence was so great that she 


166 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


secured the liberation of a number of deported Christians. But 
finally she found her imperial lover somewhat of a nuisance; 
perhaps she feared his bloodthirstiness would cost her her life. 
In short, she took part in a conspiracy against the emperor’s life 
and undertook to carry out the assassination. In the night of 
December 31, 192, this pious Christian lady handed her unsus- 
pecting lover a cup of poison, and as the latter did not take effect 
quickly enough, the emperor, already unconscious, was strangled. 

Equally characteristic is the story of Callistus, who enjoyed 
Marcia’s protection. 

“Callistus had had special gifts for financial work in his earlier 
years, and had kept a bank. He was at first the slave of a promi- 
nent Christian, who handed over to him a considerable sum which 
he was to put out at interest. On the strength of his master’s 
solidity he secured the moneys of widows and others, came at last 
to the verge of bankruptcy, and was then asked for an account 
by the master. He fled, but was captured, and sent by the master 
to the treadmill. Obtaining his liberty through the entreaties of 
his Christian brethren, then sent by the prefect to the Sardinian 
mines, he won the favor of Marcia, the most powerful mistress 
of the Emperor Commodus. At her request he was restored to 
liberty, and was shortly afterwards appointed Bishop of Rome.” *° 

Perhaps Kalthoff considers it possible that the two tales in the 
Gospels concerning the faithless steward who ‘makes to himself 
friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness” (Luke xvi, 1-9) and 
the sinful woman, who is forgiven her sins, “which are many; 
for she loved much” (Luke, vii, 36-48), were included in the 
Gospels in order “to provide an ecclesiastical interpretation and 
sanction” for the dubious characters of Marcia and Callistus, 
who were so prominent in the Christian congregation at Rome. 
This may also serve as a contribution to the history of the origin 
of the Gospels. | 

Callistus was not the last Bishop and Pope to owe his office 
to a paramour, and the murder of Commodus was not the last 


28 Kalthoff, The Rise of Christianity, translated by Joseph McCabe, London, 
1907, p. I7I-172. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 167 


act of Christian violence. The bloodthirstiness and cruelty of 
many popes and emperors, beginning with the times of Constan- 
tine the Holy, are too well known to require mention. 

The “softening and ennobling of manners” which accompanied 
the introduction of Christianity were therefore of somewhat pe- 
culiar nature. To understand their limitations and contradictions, 
it is necessary to study their economic roots; the fine moral doc- 
trines of che times will not explain them. 

And the same statement holds good of the internationalism of 
that day. 


f. The Tendency to Religion 


World-wide traffic and a political leveling process were two 
powerful causes of the increase in internationalism; yet this in- 
crease could hardly have reached the proportions it did, were it 
not for the dissolving of all those bonds which had cemented the 
old communities, simultaneously isolating them from each other. 
The organizations which had determined the entire life of the 
individual in antiquity, and had afforded him a support and guide, 
lost most of their significance and force in the Imperial Period. 
This applies not only to such organizations as were based on ties 
of blood, as the brotherhood of the gens, including even the fam- 
ily, but also to those based on a territorial unity, on a dwelling 
together on the same soil, as in the case of the clan and the com- 
munity. This, as we have seen, resulted in a general seeking, on 
the part of persons who had thus lost their moral support, for 
models and leaders, even for redeemers. But it also stimulated 
men to seek to establish new social organizations, that might 
better answer the new needs than did the traditional forms, which 
were becoming more and more a mere burden. 

Already toward the end of the Republic we find a general tend- 
ency toward the formation of clubs and associations, particularly 
for political purposes, but also for the purpose of giving bene- 
ficiary aid. These were dissolved by the Caesars, for despotism 
fears nothing so much as social organizations. The power of 
despotism is greatest when the state power represents the only 


168 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


social organization, while the citizens of the state face that power 
as scattered individuals only. 

Caesar already ‘‘dissolved all societies, with the exception of 
those that were of hoary antiquity,” reports Suetonius (Caesar, 
Chapter xlii), while he says of Augustus: 

“Many parties (plurime factiones) organized under the name 
of a new collegium for carrying out all possible atrocities... . 
These collegiums he dissolved, with the exception of those that 
were very old and legally recognized.” *° 

Mommsen finds these provisions to be quite laudable. No 
doubt, for the accomplished and unconscionable swindler Caesar 
appears to him as a genuine statesman who “served the people not 
for reward, not even for the reward of their love,” but “for the 
blessing of posterity, and above all for the permission to save 
and renew his nation”.*° To understand this estimate of 
Caesar, the reader must recall that Mommsen’s work appeared in 
the years immediately following the June Battle (the first edition 
came out in 1854), when Napoleon the Third was exalted by 
many liberals, particularly Germans, as the savior of society, and 
Napoleon made a certain cult of Caesar fashionable. 

After the cessation of political activity and of the political 
associations, those desiring social intercourse turned to more inno- 
cent societies, particularly professional societies and beneficiary 
associations for sick and death benefits, aids in poverty, volunteer 
fire associations; but merely sociable bodies, dining clubs, literary 
societies, and the like, also grew up like mushrooms. But the 
Caesars were so suspicious that they could not tolerate even such 
organizations, for the latter might serve as a cloak for more dan- 
gerous associations. 

In the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan we may still 
read letters in which Pliny speaks of a conflagration which had 
devastated Nicomedia, and recommends that the establishment of 
a volunteer fire association (collegium fabrorum) of not more 
than 150 men be permitted; such a number could easily be kept 


29 Octavianus Augustus, chap, xxXxil. 
80 History of Rome, vol. v, p. 324. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 169 


under surveillance. But Trajan found even this much to be dan- 
gerous and refused the permission that had been asked.** 

Later letters (No. 117 and No. 118) show us that even gather- 
ings of persons on the occasions of marriages or other festivities 
of rich people, at which money was distributed, seemed to Pliny 
and Trajan as involving danger to the state. 

But our historians exalt Trajan as one of the best emperors. 

The instinct for organization found itself compelled under these 
circumstances to engage in underground activities. The discovery 
of such, however, meant the death penalty for those participating. 
It is evident that mere amusements or even advantages accruing 
only to the individual, though they involved an improvement in 
his personal situation, could not be strong enough to impel any 
man to risk his neck. Only such organizations could maintain 
themselves as had for their goal something that transcended mere 
personal advantage, that would endure even if the individual 
perished; but such organizations could only gain in power if this 
goal corresponded to a strong and universally appreciated social 
interest and need, a class interest or a general interest, an interest 
most profoundly felt by great masses, and therefore capable of 
moving its most energetic and unselfish members to risk their 
lives in order to satisfy its demands. In other words, only such 
organizations could maintain themselves in the Imperial Period 
as pursued a far-reaching social object, a high ideal. No mere 
striving for practical advantages, for the safeguarding of momen- 
tary interests, but only the most revolutionary or idealistic en- 
thusiasm could then give life and vigor to any organization. 

This idealism had nothing in common with philosophical ideal- 
ism. The pursuit of great social goals may be the result of a 
materialistic philosophy also, in fact only the materialistic method, 
basing itself on experience, on the study of the necessary rela- 
tions of cause and effect in our experiences, may lead to the pro- 
posal of great social goals that are free from illusions. But all 
the necessary prerequisites for the existence of such a method 
were lacking in the Imperial Period. The individual could rise 


81 Pliny, Letters, x, 42 and 43. 


170 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


beyond himself only by means of a moralizing mysticism, and thus 
attain the vision of goals transcending personal and temporary 
well-being, in other words, only by means of that mode of thought 
which is known as religious. Only religious associations main- 
tained themselves in the Imperial Period. But we should have 
an erroneous understanding of them if their religious form, their 
moralizing mysticism, should make us overlook the social content 
inherent in all these organizations, which gave them their strength: 
the longing for a cessation of the existing sad conditions, for 
higher social forms, for a close codperation and a mutual support 
for these many individuals now mentally homeless, who drew new 
courage and joy from having banded together for high achieve- 
ment. . 

But these religious organizations involved a new line of cleavage 
in society, at the very moment when the concept of nationality 
was expanded, at least as far as the Mediterranean countries were 
concerned, to that of kumanity. The purely economic organiza- 
tions which aimed to help the individual only in one particular 
respect or other, did not weaken the individual’s attachment to 
existing society and gave him no new interest in life. But it was 
different with the religious societies, which pursued a great social 
ideal under a religious garb. This ideal was diametrically opposed 
to the existing system of society, not in one point only, but in 
every possible respect. The advocates of this ideal spoke the 
same language as their surroundings, and yet were not under- 
stood by them, and at every step the two worlds, the old and the 
new, encountered each other in a hostile manner, although both 
lived in the same land. Thus a new opposition arose between 
men. At the very moment when the Gaul and the Syrian, the 
Roman and the Egyptian, the Spaniard and the Greek, were be- 
ginning to lose their national identity, there arose the great differ- 
ence between believers and unbelievers, saints and sinners, Chris- 
tians and pagans, which was soon to divide the world as with a - 
gulf. 

As this contrast became sharper, as the struggle became more 
emphatic, intolerance and fanaticism also increased, a necessary 
accompaniment of any struggle, constituting, like the struggle 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 171 


itself, a necessary element of progress and evolution, if they give 
animus and energy to the forces of progress. But let the reader 
note that we use the word “intolerance” not as meaning a forcible 
suppression of propaganda for all inconvenient opinions, but an 
energetic rejection and criticism of all different views, accom- 
panied by an energetic defense of one’s own views. Only cow- 
ardice and indolence could be “tolerant” in this sense, where great 
and universal life questions are at stake. 

To be sure, these interests are subject to constant change. A 
question of life and death yesterday, may today be a matter of 
indifference, hardly worth fighting for. Therefore a fanatical 
advocacy of such a point, yesterday still a necessity, may today 
become an occasion for wasted energy, and thus have very unfor- 
tunate effects. 

Thus the religious intolerance and religious fanaticism of many 
of the Christian sects that were gaining strength at this time con- 
stituted one of the forces which accelerated the social evolution, 
as long as social goals were accessible to the masses only when 
clothed in religious garb; in other words, from the Imperial Era 
to the Era of the Reformation. But these qualities became reac- 
tionary and constituted only a means of retarding progress, when 
the religious mode of thought was superseded by the methods of 
modern science, with the result that it is cherished only by back- 
ward classes and strata of the population, or backward regions, 
and may not in any manner continue to serve as an envelope for 
new social goals. 

Religious intolerance was an entirely new trait in the mode of 
thought of ancient society. Intolerant though the latter may 
have been from a nationalistic standpoint, slight as was its respect 
for strangers, not to mention foreigners, whom it enslaved or slew, 
even though they may not have fought as soldiers, ancient society 
nevertheless did not dream of despising anyone for his religious 
convictions. Those cases that may perhaps be regarded as re- 
ligious persecutions, as, for example, the trial of Socrates, may be 
explained as the results of political accusations that were not 
religious in character. 

The new mode of thought arising in the Imperial Era was the 


172 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


first to bring religious intolerance with it, and it did this on both 
sides, Christian as well as pagan, on the pagan side, of course, 
not involving intolerance to all foreign religions, but only toward 
that which was preaching a new social ideal under a religious 
cloak, an ideal absolutely opposed to the existing order of society. 

In all other cases, the pagans retained the religious tolerance 
they had formerly practiced; in fact, it was precisely in these 
imperial days of international intercourse that a certain inter- 
nationalism of religious cults became established. Foreign mer- 
chants and other travelers always took their gods with them 
wherever they went, and strange gods were then more highly 
regarded than the native gods; for the latter had not been of 
much use; they had shown their impotence. The same feeling 
of desperation which resulted from the general disintegration also 
led to a loss of faith in the old gods, impelling many of the bolder 
and more independent spirits to turn to atheism and skepticism, 
to doubts of all divinity, and even of all philosophy. The more 
timid, the weaker elements, however, were moved to seek a new 
redeemer, as we have seen, in whom they might find a support and 
a hope. Many thought they had found this quality in the Caesars, 
who were made gods. Others thought it wiser to turn to gods 
that had long been venerated as such, but had not yet been given 
a trial in their adopted country. The result was that foreign 
religions became popular. 

In this international competition of divinities, however, the 
Orient defeated the Occident, partly because the oriental religions 
were less naive, more imbued with the rich philosophy of the 
large cities, for reasons that we shall learn later, but partly also 
because the East was defeating the West in the industrial field. 

The ancient civilization of the Orient was far superior to that 
of the Occident when it was plundered first by the Macedonians 
and later by the Romans. Perhaps the reader may think that 
the international leveling down which had then begun would also 
have involved an industrial equalization, necessarily raising the 
West to the level of the East, but the opposite was what actually 
resulted. We have seen that beginning with a certain point there 
is a general process of disintegration in the ancient world, a con- 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 173 


sequence in part of the predominance of compulsory labor over 
free labor, in part of the plundering of the provinces by Rome 
and by usurious capital. But this decay proceeds more rapidly 
in the West than in the East, with the result that the cultural 
superiority of the latter for many centuries, beginning with the 
Second Century of our era, and extending to about 1000 ALD., 
does not decrease but increase. Poverty, barbarism, depopula- 
tion, make more rapid strides in the West than in the East. 

The cause of this phenomenon is to be found above all in the 
industrial superiority of the East and the constant increase in the 
exploitation of the working classes throughout the Empire. The 
surplus profits yielded by the latter flowed for the most part to 
Rome, the seat of all the great exploiters, from all the provinces. 
But of all of the surplus accumulated in Rome, which took the 
form of money, the lion’s share flowed to the East. For it was 
the East alone that produced all the articles of luxury desired by 
the great exploiters. It was the East that furnished the luxury, 
slaves, and also industrial products, such as glass and purple in 
Pheenicia; linen and embroidered cloths in Egypt; fine woolens 
and leathers in Asia Minor; rugs in Babylonia. And the decreas- 
ing fertility of Italy was making Egypt a granary of Rome, for, 
thanks to the overflowings of the river, covering the soil of Egypt 
with a new fruitful mud each year, the agriculture of the Nile 
Valley was inexhaustible. 

To be sure, much of what the Orient furnished was being taken 
by force in the form of taxes and usurious interest, but there still 
remained a considerable quantity which had to be paid for with 
the yield of the exploitation of the West, whose poverty was 
increasing. _ 

The traffic with the East was beginning to extend beyond the 
boundaries of the Empire. Alexandria became wealthy, not only 
through the sale of Egyptian industrial products, but also by 
serving as an intermediary in the trade with Arabia and India, 
while a commercial route to China started from Sinope on the 
Black Sea. Pliny estimated in his Natural History that about 
100,000,000 sesterces (more than $5,000,000) was taken out 
of the Empire annually to pay for Chinese silks, Indian jewels 


174 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and Arabian spices, without any noteworthy compensation in the 
form of commodities, and also without in any way obligating 
foreign lands to pay tribute or interest. The whole amount had 
to be paid in precious metal. 

But with the oriental merchandise, the oriental merchants 
also came to the West, bringing their forms of worship with them. 
These were quite acceptable to the needs of the West, by reason 
of the fact that similar social conditions had already existed in 
the Orient, though perhaps not developed to such disastrous 
proportions as had now been reached throughout the Roman 
Empire. The idea of redemption by a divinity whose good graces 
were acquired by a renunciation of earthly pleasures was peculiar 
to most of these cults which now rapidly spread throughout the 
Empire, particularly to the Egyptian cult of Isis, and the Persian 
cult of Mithra. 

“Tsis particularly, whose worship had begun in Rome at the 
time of Sulla, and had gained imperial favor under Vespasian, was 
now spreading to the furthest point West, and had gradually 
attained an enormous, all-embracing significance, first as a god- 
dess of healing, particularly in the narrow physical sense. .. . 
Her worship was rich in magnificent processions, and also in 
chastisements, atonements, and strict observations, particularly 
in mysteries. It was precisely the religious longing, the hope for 
forgiveness of sins, the desire for severe penances and the hope 
to gain a blessed immortality by complete surrender to a divinity, 
that encouraged the spread of such exotic cults in the Greek or 
Roman Olympus, which formerly had been rather indifferent to 
such mysterious ceremonies, enraptured ecstasies, magic practices, 
self-denials, boundless surrender to divinity, renunciation and 
penance as a condition for purification and holiness. Still more 
powerful was the secret worship of Mithra, which was particu- 
larly disseminated by the armies, and which also laid claim to 


redemption and immortality; this cult first became known under 
Tiberius.” * 


82 Hertzberg, Geschichte des rémischen Kaisereichs, p. 451. The English 
translation of this book, Imperial Rome (Philadelphia, 1905), omits this passage. 
— TRANSLATOR. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 175 


East Indian views also became current in the Roman Empire; 
for example, Apollonius of Tyana, whom we have already had 
occasion to mention, took a special trip to India to study ‘the 
philosophical and religious doctrines current in that country. We 
have also heard concerning Plotinus that he traveled to Persia in 
order to become better acquainted with Persian and Indian lore. 

All these views and cults did not fail to leave a trace among 
the Christians who were striving for redemption and exaltation; 
they were one of the most powerful influences on the early stages 
of the cult and the legends of Christianity. 

“Eusebius, a Father of the Church, treated this Egyptian cult 
contemptuously as a ‘wisdom of beetles’, and yet the myth of the 
Virgin Mary is only an echo of the myths originating on the banks 
of the Nile. 

“Osiris was represented on earth by the steer Apis. Just as 
Osiris himself had been conceived by his mother without the 
intervention of a god, so was it also necessary for his representa- 
tive on earth to be conceived by a virgin cow without the assist- 
ance of a bull. Herodotus informs us that the mother of Apis 
was fructified by a sunbeam, while according to Plutarch she con- 
ceived from a moonbeam. 

“Like Apis, Jesus had no father, having been begotten by a 
beam of light from Heaven. Apis was a steer, but he represented 
a god; Jesus was a god represented by a lamb. But Osiris himself 
was also represented as having the head of a ram.” *° 

As a matter of fact, a scoffer remarked, perhaps in the Third 
Century, when Christianity was already quite strong, that there 
was no very great difference in Egypt between Christians and 
pagans: ‘‘Those who worshiped Sarapis in Egypt are also Chris- 
tians, and those who call themselves Christian Bishops are also 
worshipers of Sarapis; every grand rabbi of the Jews, every 
Samaritan, every Christian priest in Egypt, was at the same time 
a sorcerer, a prophet, a mountebank (aliptes). Even when the 


83 Lafargue, Der Mythus von der unbefleckten Empfiangnis, Die Neue Zeit, 
vol. xl, No. I, p. 49. 


176 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Patriarch comes to Egypt, some want him to pray to Sarapis, 
while others want him to pray to Christ.” ** 

Furthermore, the story of the birth of Christ, as found in Luke, 
has certain Buddhist traits. 

Pfleiderer points out that the author of the Gospel could not 
have invented this tale out of whole cloth, unhistorical though it 
may be, but must have taken it from legends ‘‘which had come to 
his knowledge in some way”, possibly ancient legends which were 
common to all the Western Asiatic peoples. “For we find the 
same legends with at times strikingly similar earmarks, in the 
story of the childhood of the East Indian Savior Buddha (who 
lived in the Fifth Century B.c., K.). He also is born miraculously 
by the Virgin Queen Maya, whose immaculate body had been 
entered by Buddha in his character as a light of Heaven. At his 
birth also, celestial spirits appear and intone the following song 
of praise: ‘A wondrous hero, an incomparable hero has been born. 
Hail to the world, full of mercy, today thou spreadest out thy 
benevolence over all the things of universal space! Let joy and 
satisfaction come to all creatures, that they may be calm, masters 
of themselves and happy.’ Buddha also is then brought by his 
mother to the temple so that the legal customs may be complied 
with; there he is found by the old hermit Asita, who has been 
induced by a premonition to descend from Himalaya; Asita 
prophesies that this child will be the Buddha, the redeemer from 
all evils, a guide to freedom and light and immortality. . . . And 
finally we have a summary account of how the royal child gains 
daily in mental perfection and bodily strength and beauty—which 
is precisely what is said of the child Jesus in Luke ii, 40 and 52.” **° 

“Examples of early wisdom are also told of the growing 
Gautama; among other stories, it is told that, during a festival 
of his people, the boy was lost and, after an eager search, he was 
found by his father in a circle of holy men lost in pious reflection, 


84 Cited by Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, London, 1886, 
vol. ii, p. 266. 
35 Primitive Christianity, London, 1906-1911, vol. ii, pp. 108-110. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 177 


whereupon he admonished the marveling father to seek after 
higher things.” °° 

In the book mentioned above, Pfleiderer points out additional 
elements that were taken by Christianity from other forms of 
worship; for example, from the worship of Mithra. We have 
already cited Pfleiderer’s reference to the precedent for the Lord’s 
Supper, which was “‘one of the Mithra sacraments” (page 158). 
There are probably pagan elements also in the doctrine of the 
Resurrection. 

“Perhaps Paul was influenced by the popular idea of the god 
who dies and returns to life, dominant at that time in the Adonis, 
Attis and Osiris cults of Hither Asia (with various names and 
customs, everywhere much alike). At Antioch, the Syrian capital, 
in which Paul had been active for a considerable period, the main 
celebration of the Adonis-feast took place in the springtime; on 
the first day (in the Osiris celebration it was the third day after 
the death, while in the Attis celebration it was the fourth day), 
the death of Adonis, ‘the Lord’, was celebrated, while on the fol- 
lowing day, amid the wild songs of lamentations sung by the 
women, the burial of his corpse (represented by an image) was 
enacted; on the next day, proclamation was made that the god 
lives and he (his image) was made to rise in air,”’ etc.*” 

But Pfleiderer rightly points out that Christianity did not 
merely take over these pagan elements, but adapted them to suit 
its unified system of belief. For Christianity could not grant 
asylum to the strange gods without transforming them; its 
monotheism alone would have been sufficient to prevent such a 
procedure. 


g. Monotheism 


But even monotheism, the faith in a single god, was not char- 
acteristic of Christianity alone. In this case also we have an 
opportunity to reveal the economic roots on which the idea is 
based. We have already seen how the inhabitants of large cities 
became estranged from nature, how all the traditional organiza- 


_ 86 Pfleiderer, Christian Origins, New York, 1906, p. 220. 
37 Op, cit., p. 175. 


178 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


tions, which had formerly afforded a firm moral support to the 
individual, were dissolved; and, finally, how a preoccupation with 
the ego became the principal task of philosophy, which gradually 
shifted its ground from the investigation of the external world 
into a brooding on the individual’s own feelings and needs. 

The gods had at first served as explanations for the processes 
of nature whose causal connections were not yet understood. 
These processes were very numerous and of the most varied kinds; 
they therefore required for their explanation the creation of the 
most manifold and various gods, gruesome and cheerful, brutal 
and tender, male and female. Then, with the advance in the 
knowledge of the causal relations in nature, the individual gods 
became more and more superfluous. But in the course of thou- 
sands of years they had taken too firm a root in man’s thought, 
and become too closely associated with his daily occupations, 
while the knowledge of nature was still by no means so complete 
as to wipe out the faith in the gods entirely. The gods now 
found themselves driven out of one field of activity after the 
other; from having been constant companions of men, they now 
became extraordinary miraculous phenomena; having once been 
inhabitants of the earth, they were now assigned to regions above 
the earth, in the sky; having been vigorous, energetic workers 
and fighters, who tirelessly kept the world in commotion, they 
now became meditative observers of the universal scene. 

Probably the advance in natural science would finally have 
abolished them altogether, if the rise of the large city and the 
economic decline that we have already described had not brought 
about an estrangement from nature and caused the foreground 
of thought to be occupied chiefly by the study of the spirit by 
the spirit; in other words, not by a scientific study of the sum 
of all the mental phenomena that had been experienced, but by a 
study in which the spirit of the individual became the source of 
all wisdom concerning itself, and this wisdom in turn was made 
the key to all the wisdom of the world. But manifold and 
changeable though the feelings and needs of the soul might be, 
the soul itself was assumed to be an indivisible unit. And the 
souls of others were conceived to be of exactly the same texture 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 179 


as the soul of the perceiving individual. A scientific attitude 
would have drawn the inference of the necessary subjection of 
all mental operations to uniform laws. But just at that time the 
ancient moral props were beginning to dissolve, with the result 
that man lost his former background and seemed now to be free; 
the individual seemed to possess freedom of the will. The uni- 
form nature of the spirit in all men seemed then susceptible only 
of the explanation that this spirit was everywhere a portion of 
the same spirit, of a single spirit whose emanation and counterfeit 
constitutes the inscrutable and uniform spirit in all individuals. 
Spaceless, as the individual soul, was also this universal soul. 
But this soul was conceived as being present and active in all 
persons, in other words, as omnipresent and omniscient; the most 
secret thoughts could not be concealed from it. The greater 
attention that was being given to the moral interest, as opposed 
to the interest in nature, which gave rise to the assumption of 
this universal soul, also imparted a moral character to the uni- 
versal soul. The latter came to embody all the moral ideas then 
occupying the minds of men. But in order to attain this state, 
the soul had to be divorced from the bodily nature inherent in 
the soul of man and obscuring its morality. We thus have the 
development of a new divinity. This divinity was necessarily a 
single unit, corresponding to the unity of the soul of the individual, 
as opposed to the manifold nature of the gods of antiquity, which 
corresponded to the complexity of the natural processes going on 
around us. And this new single divinity stood beyond nature 
and above nature; it existed before nature, which is one of its 
creations, as opposed to the ancient gods, who had been a portion 
of nature and possessed no seniority over nature. 

But while the new spiritual interests of men were purely psychic 
and moral in character, they could not entirely neglect nature. 
And as the natural sciences were falling into disuse, it again 
became more customary to assume the intervention of super- 
human personal elements in order to explain natural events. The 
superior beings who now were represented as intervening in the 
universal process were no longer sovereign gods, as they once had 
been, but were subordinated to the universal spirit as nature was 


180 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


subordinated to God, and the body to the spirit, according to the 
conception of those days. They were creatures that stood some- 
where between God and men. 

This view of things was further supported by the course of 
events in the political field. The destruction of the Republic of 
the gods in Heaven went hand in hand with the downfall of the 
Republic in Rome; God became the almighty Caesar of the here- 
after; like Caesar he had his court, the saints and the angels, and 
his Republican opposition were the devil and his hosts. 

Finally the Christians went so far as to divide God’s celestial 
bureaucracy, the angels, according to rank, into classes corre- 
sponding to the divisions made by the Caesars among their earthly 
bureaucracy, and the angels seem to have been subject to the same 
pride of place as the officials of the emperor. 

Beginning with Constantine, the courtiers and state officials 
were divided into a number of ranks, each of which had the right 
to use a certain title. We find the following titles: 1. the gloriosi, 
namely, the highly celebrated, who were the Consuls; 2. the 
nobilissimi, or most noble; these were the princes of the blood; 
3. the patricii, the barons. In addition to these ranks of nobility 
there were also ranks among the upper bureaucracy; 4. the 
illustres, or the illustrious ones; 5. the spectabiles, or respectable 
ones; 6. the clarissimi, or famous ones; and below these we have: 
7. the perfectissimi, or most perfect ones; 8. the egregii, or dis- 
tinguished ones; 9. the comites, or “privy councilors”’. 

Our theologians will bear me out when I say that the celestial 
court is organized in exactly the same manner. 

Thus, for example, the Church Lexicon of Catholic Theology ** 
(issued by Wetzer and Welte, Freiburg in Breisgau, 1849) men- 
tions in its article “Angel” the enormous number of angels and 
goes on to say: 

“Following the precedent of Saint Ambrosius, many teachers 
believed that the ratio between the number of angels and the 
number of men is as 99 to 1; for instance, the lost sheep in the 
Parable of the Good Shepherd (Luke xii, 32) stands for the 


38 Tn German.—TRANSLATOR. 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 181 


human race, while the 99 sheep that are not lost represent the 
angels. The angels of this countless host are grouped in a number 
of classes, and the Church—opposing even the opinion of Origen, 
who held that all spirits are like unto each other as to substance, 
strength, etc—came out frankly in favor of distinctions between 
the angels, at the Second Council at Constantinople in 553 a.p. 
The Church recognizes nine choirs of angels, which are grouped 
in choruses of three choirs each. These nine orders are: 1. the 
Seraphim, 2. the Cherubim, 3. the Throni (thrones), 4. the Domi- 
nationes (rulers), 5. the Virtutes (virtues), 6. the Potestates 
(mighty ones), 7. the Principatus (principalities), 8. the Arch- 
angeli (archangels), 9. the Angeli (common angels).*° 

“Tt seems beyond all doubt that the angels constitute in the 
narrow sense of the word the lowest and most numerous class, 
while the Seraphim are the uppermost and least numerous class.” 
Things on earth are not much different: there are not many offi- 
cials with high titles, but we have a large number of common 
letter carriers. 

The above article also contains the following information: 
“The angels live in intimate and personal communion with God 
and their relation with God is therefore one of infinite worship, 
of humble submission, of untiring affection that renounces all 
love aside from the love of God, of a complete and joyous sur- 
render of their entire being, of steadfast fidelity, unfaltering 
obedience, profound respect, gratitude without end, ardent prayer, 
as well as ceaseless laudation, of constant magnification, of awe- 
some praise, of holy jubilation, and rapturous rejoicing.” 

Similar joyous submission was required by the emperors on the 
part of their courtiers and officials. Such was the ideal of Byzan- 
tinism. | 

It is apparent that the image of the sole God as it grew up in 
Christianity was not less a product of imperial despotism than 
of philosophy, which since the days of Plato had turned more 
and more toward monotheism. 

This philosophy was so much in accord with the general feeling 
and the general needs that it soon became a part of the popular 


39 The word angelus at first signifies simply a messenger. 


182 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


consciousness. Thus, for example, we already find in Plautus, a 
writer of comedies, who lived in the Third Century, B.c., and 
whose ideas were those of a cheap popular philosophy, such pas- 
sages as the following statement of a slave, who is asking for 
a favor: 


“Vet there is a God, hearing and seeing all that is done by us men, 
He will do by your son as you here have done by me. 
He will reward good deeds and also requite deeds of evil.’’ 
(The Prisoners of War, Act II, Scene 2.) 


We are already face to face with a conception of God that is 
quite Christian. But this monotheism was extremely naive, 
thoughtlessly permitting the old gods to continue existing by its 
side. Nor did it occur to the Christians themselves to question 
the existence of the ancient gods, since they accepted so many 
pagan miracles without question. But the Christian God tolerated 
no other gods but him; he would be sole ruler. If the pagan 
gods would not submit to him and consent to be enrolled among 
his court, there was no other role left them but that played by 
the Republican opposition under the earlier emperors, which for 
the most part was a very sorry role. It consisted merely in occa- 
sional efforts to play some trick on the Almighty Lord, to incite 
his virtuous subjects against him, without any hope of ever over- 
throwing the master, but with the sole prospect of occasionally 
irritating him. 

But even this intolerant monotheism, sure of its victory, which 
doubted not for a moment the superiority and omnipotence of its 
God, was already in existence when Christianity came upon the 
scene. To be sure, not among the pagans, but among a small 
nation of peculiar character, the Jews, who developed the belief 
in a redeemer, and the obligation of mutual aid, and of a firm 
solidarity, to a far greater extent, and who satisfied much better 
the strong need felt at that time for such doctrines, than did any 
other nation or class of society in that era. The Jews, therefore, 
imparted a mighty impetus to the new doctrine arising from these 


CURRENTS OF THOUGHT 183 


needs, and contributed to it some of its most important elements. 
In order to reveal completely all the roots from which Chris- 
tianity grew, we must add to our general study of the Roman- 
Hellenic world, under the Imperial Era, a specific study of the 
Jewish people. 

























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PART THREE 


THE JEWS 





I. THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 


a. Semitic Tribal Migrations 


THE beginnings of the history of Israel are involved in pro- 
found obscurity, perhaps even more than is the case with Greek 
and Roman history. For not only were these early stages trans- 
mitted through many centuries by word of mouth alone, but even 
when the old legends began to be collected and recorded, they 
were distorted in the worst propaganda manner. Nothing would 
be more erroneous than the assumption that biblical history is a 
record of actual happenings; the Bible stories may contain a 
historical nucleus, but this nucleus is extremely difficult to deter- 
mine. 

It was only after the return from the Babylonian Exile, in the 
Fifth Century, B.c., that the “sacred” scriptures of the Jews were 
given the form in which we have them today. All the ancient 
traditions were at that time manipulated and supplemented by 
fabrications, with the greatest audacity, in order to answer the 
requirements of the rising priestly caste. All of the ancient his- 
tory of the Jews was thus turned topsy-turvy; this is particularly 
true of what we are told concerning the religion of Israel before 
the Exile. 

When the Jews founded a community of their own, after the 
Exile, in Jerusalem and in the surrounding country, this com- 
munity soon impressed other tribes by its peculiarities, as a num- 
ber of records show. But with regard to the period before the 
Exile no such records have been preserved. Before the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the Israelites were con- 
sidered by other peoples as a nation not unlike other nations; no 
particular traits seemed to distinguish them from others; and 
there is every reason to assume that the Jews until then actually 
presented no exceptional qualities. 


It is impossible, in view of the scantiness and unreliability of 
187 


188 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the available sources, to draw an accurate picture of ancient 
Israel. Protestant Bible criticism, as practiced by the theologians, 
has already proved that much has been forged and invented, but 
far too much is still accepted at its face value, merely because it 
has not yet been revealed as a manifest forgery. 

We have practically nothing but hypotheses to go by in our 
attempt to outline the development of Israelitic society. The 
reports of the Old Testament will give us valuable service wher- 
ever we are able to compare them with descriptions of peoples 
in similar situations. 

The historical existence of the Jews does not begin until they 
penetrate into the country of the Canaanites. All the tales of 
their nomadic period are either ancient tribal legends, with propa- 
ganda adornments, or fairy tales, or later inventions. They first 
appear in history as participants in a great Semitic migration of 
nations. 

Migrations of nations play the same part in the ancient world 
that revolutions do today. In the preceding section we considered 
the downfall of the Roman Empire and traced the stages pre- 
liminary to its inundation by the Teutonic barbarians, which 
event is called the “migration of nations”. This is not an un- 
paralleled phenomenon. The ancient Orient had already known 
it on repeated occasions, on a smaller scale, but as a result of 
similar causes. 

In many of the fruitful basins of the great oriental rivers, 
agriculture developed at an early time, providing a considerable 
surplus of foodstuffs, and permitting the existence and activities 
of a numerous population devoted to other occupations besides 
that of agriculture. The arts, crafts, and sciences flourished, and 
an aristocracy developed, with the opportunity to devote its time 
exclusively to the arts of war, and this aristocracy became all the 
more necessary as the wealth of the river region began to entice 
warlike nomadic neighbors to engage in predatory incursions. 
The peasant who wished to till his fields in peace needed the pro- 
tection of such an aristocracy, for which he had to pay. But as 
the aristocracy grew stronger, it easily succumbed to the tempta- 
tion to employ its warlike strength for the purpose of increasing 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 189 


its income, particularly as the progress of the arts and crafts gave 
rise to all sorts of luxuries which could only be obtained by the 
possessors of wealth. The peasants begin to be oppressed, and 
campaigns begin to be made by the aristocrats, more skilled in 
arms, and their vassals, against neighboring peoples for the pur- 
pose of capturing them as slaves. Compulsory labor begins, and 
gradually pushes society into the same blind alley which was 
later to be the final stage of society in the Roman Imperial Era 
also. The free peasant is ruined, he is replaced by forced labor; 
simultaneously the basis of the Empire’s warlike strength is de- 
stroyed. Likewise, in spite of their superiority in arms, the aris- 
tocracy lose their warlike prowess, being undermined by the 
increase in luxury. 

They lose the ability needed for the discharge of the functions 
demanded by their social position: that of defending the common- 
wealth against the invasions of predatory neighbors. These 
neighbors gradually become thoroughly aware of the rich and 
enticing booty so near at hand, they gradually press closer and 
closer upon the boundaries, finally overflowing them and thus 
inaugurating a tendency which embraces more and more tribes 
pushing behind them, with the result that the movement does not 
terminate for some time. Some of the invaders take possession 
of land and thus create a new free peasantry. Others, the more 
powerful ones, establish a new warlike aristocracy, while the 
older aristocracy, the guardian of the arts and sciences of the 
ancient civilization, may continue to maintain a superior status 
to that of the barbarian conquerors, but it is no longer a caste 
of warriors but rather a caste of priests. 

When this migratory movement has ceased, the course of evolu- 
tion again passes through the same cycle, which may perhaps be 
compared with the cycle of prosperity and crisis in capitalist 
society; but the older cycle was not merely a cycle recurring 
each decade, but one covering many centuries, a cycle which was 
not superseded until the capitalistic mode of production inter- 
vened, just as the cycle of crises of today will not be overcome 
until socialistic production is installed. 


190 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


In the various regions of Asia and Northern Africa this course 
of evolution continued for thousands of years; it was most per- 
ceptible in spots where broad, fruitful river valleys produced 
immense wealth, but this wealth resulted in a profound corruption 
and enervation. The less favored regions produced poor but war- 
like nomadic tribes, ever ready to change their domicile when 
booty called, and who at a favorable opportunity could gather 
swiftly in countless numbers at any single point in order to pene- 
trate violently and destructively into the region. The valleys of 
the Hoang-Ho and Yangtse-Kiang, in which the Chinese nation 
developed, are examples of this condition; also the valley of the 
Ganges, where enticing wealth was concentrated; those of the 
Euphrates and Tigris, where the mighty empires of Babylonia 
and Assyria arose; and finally the valley of the Nile, which is 
Egypt. 

But in one case we have Central Asia, and in the other Arabia, 
which were inexhaustible reservoirs of warlike nomads who were 
a constant menace to their neighbors and sometimes made use of 
their weakness as an opportunity to begin immense immigrations. 

From Central Asia, at such periods of weakness, streams of 
Mongols, and on certain occasions also of so-called Indo-Germans, 
would break through the barriers of civilization. From Arabia 
came those tribes which are included under the general name of 
Semites. The goals of the Semitic invaders were Babylonia, 
Assyria, Egypt, and the intermediate region of the Mediterranean. 

Somewhat more than a thousand years before Christ, one of 
these great Semitic migrations begins; it advances toward Meso- 
potamia, Syria, Egypt, and perhaps closes some time in the 
Eleventh Century B.c. Among the Semitic tribes who conquered 
neighboring cultural territory at that time were the Hebrews. 
In view of their Bedouin-like wanderings they may perhaps have 
encountered the Egyptian boundaries and Mt. Sinai before this, 
but it is only after they settled down in Palestine that the Hebrew 
community took definite form, leaving behind the stage of 
nomadic instability, under which there was no possibility for the 
formation of a large nation, 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 191 


b. Palestine 


From this time on, the history and the characteristics of the 
Israelites are no longer determined only by the qualities acquired 
in the Bedouin stage, and perhaps retained for some time after, 
but also by the character and the situation of Palestine. 

We must be on our guard against overestimating the influence 
of the geographic factor in history. In historic times the geo- 
graphic factor—situation, contour of the soil, climate—does, to 
be sure, continue on the whole the same in most countries; this 
factor is present before history begins and surely has a powerful 
influence on the latter. But the manner in which the geographic 
factor will influence the history of a country frequently depends 
on the level attained by technical skill and social conditions in 
that country. 

Thus, for example, the English would surely not have reached 
their dominant position in the world in the Eighteenth and Nine- 
teenth Centuries, if it had not been for the peculiar character of 
their country, with its wealth in coal and iron and its insular 
position. But so long as coal and iron did not play the important 
part in industry which they played in the age of steam, these 
natural treasures of the soil were of slight importance. And 
before America and the sea-route to India were discovered, before 
Spain, France, Germany became highly civilized; while these 
countries were still inhabited by mere barbarians, and European 
trade was concentrated around the Mediterranean and carried on 
chiefly by ships propelled by oars, England’s insular position was 
still a factor which cut it off from European civilization and main- 
tained it in a condition of weakness and barbarism. 

The same peculiarities of a country may therefore have very 
different results under different social conditions; even where the 
nature of the country has not been transformed-by a change in 
the mode of production, its influence will not necessarily be the 
same. We again and again encounter as the deciding factor the 
sum total of all the economic conditions. 

The history of Israel was therefore determined not by the 


192 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


nature and situation of Palestine, considered absolutely, but by 
the latter under certain definite conditions of society. 

The peculiar situation of Palestine was that it constituted a 
border region in which hostile elements were brought together and 
fought each other. It lay at a point where, on the one hand, the 
Arabian desert ended and the land of Syrian cultivation began, 
and where, on the other hand, the spheres of influence of those two 
great empires collided, which stand at the beginning of our civi- 
lization and dominate that beginning, namely, the Egyptian, orig- 
inating in the Nile valley, and the Mesopotamian, originating on 
the Euphrates and the Tigris, with its center now at Babylon, 
now at Nineveh. 

As a final element, Palestine was traversed by extremely impor- 
tant commercial roads. It dominated the traffic between Egypt 
on one side and Syria and Mesopotamia on the other, as well as 
the Pheenician trade with Arabia. 

Let us first consider the effect of the former factor. Palestine 
was a fruitful country; its fruitfulness was by no means excep- 
tional, but necessarily seemed unusually luxuriant when compared 
with the neighboring desolate, stony and sandy regions. Its in- 
habitants considered it as a land overflowing with milk and honey. 

The Hebrew tribes came as nomadic cattle-breeders, in con- 
stant conflict with the inhabitants of Palestine, the Canaanites, 
from whom they conquered one city after another, subjecting 
them more and more to their rule. These Hebrew tribes grad- 
ually settled down. But what they had conquered in constant 
warfare had to be held by constant warfare, for other nomads 
were pushing behind them, equally eager for this fruitful land, 
the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and others. 

In the conquered country the Hebrews remained shepherds for 
a long time, although they now had definite homes. But they 
gradually acquired the agriculture that had been practiced by the 
original inhabitants, the raising of grain, grapes, the cultivation 
of olive and fig trees, and intermarried with the earlier inhabitants. 
But they long retained the characteristics of the nomadic Bedouin 
life that had been theirs. 

The nomadic cattle-breeding of the desert seems to be partic- 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 193 


ularly unfavorable to technical progress and social development. 
The present-day mode of life of the Bedouins of Arabia still 
vividly recalls that found in the ancient Israelitic legends of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The eternal recurrence of the same 
activities and tribulations, the same needs and ideas, over thou- 
sands of years, from generation to generation, finally produces a 
tenacious conservatism, which is more deeply rooted in the 
nomadic shepherd than even in the farmer, and is very favorable 
to the preservation of ancient customs and institutions, even after 
great alterations have intervened. We may probably consider 
the fact that the hearth had no definite place in the house of the 
Israelitic peasant, and no religious significance, as an expression 
of this nomadic tradition. ‘“In this point the Israelites resemble 
the Arabs and are distinguished from the Greeks, to whom they 
stand much nearer in other matters of daily life,” says Wellhausen, 
adding: ‘“Hebrew may hardly be said to have a word for ‘hearth,’ 
the word ashphot, characteristically enough, acquired the signifi- 
cance of ‘garbage-heap.’ This is quite different from the Indo- 
European hearth, the domestic altar; the Hebrews have the eternal 
lamp instead of a never-extinguished hearth fire.” * 

Among the customs retained by the Israelites from their 
Bedouin period, the inclination and predilection for trade in com- 
modities is perhaps the most important. 

We have already indicated above, in our study of Roman 
society, how early is the development of trade between peoples, 
as compared with that between individuals. The first to practice 
trade probably were nomadic shepherds living in the wilderness. 
Their manner of gaining a livelihood forced them to wander about 
without fixed domicile from one pasture to another. The scant 
resources of their country must have stimulated earliest among 
them the need for the products of other more favorably situated 
countries whose boundaries they encountered. Probably they 
exchanged grain, oil, dates, or tools of wood, stone, bronze, and 
iron, for cattle, which they produced in abundance. But their 
mobility also permitted them not only to acquire products for 
themselves from afar, but also to exchange products that were 

1 Wellhausen, Israelitische und jiidische Geschichte, pp. 87, 88. 


194 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


much in demand, and easily transported, for the account of others; 
in other words, not for the purpose of retaining such products for 
their own use or consumption, but for passing them on in further 
transactions. They thus became the first merchants. As long 
as there were no roads and navigation was poorly developed, this 
form of trading was necessarily predominant and might lead to 
the acquisition of great wealth by those who practiced it. Later, 
as maritime commerce increased, and as permanent and prac- 
ticable roads were built, the commerce formerly conducted by the 
nomads necessarily decreased, and the latter were again limited 
to the products of their wilderness and became poorer. It is to 
this condition that we must attribute at least in part the great 
decline of the ancient civilization of Asia after the discovery of. 
the sea-route to India. Arabia had already become impoverished 
for the same reason; its nomads had carried on a very profitable 
trade with the Phcenician cities when the latter were most flour- 
ishing. They furnished to the Pheenician looms, which produced 
for export to the West, the highly prized wool of their sheep; but 
they also brought to them the products of the southern, rich and 
fruitful “Happy” Arabia, frankincense, spices, gold, and precious 
stones, and in addition they brought from Ethiopia, separated 
from Happy Arabia only by a narrow strait, such valuable goods 
as ivory and ebony. The trade with India also passed for the 
most part through Arabia, along whose coasts, facing the Persian 
Gulf and Indian Ocean, the merchandise was brought on ships 
from Malabar and Ceylon, thereupon to be transported through 
the desert to Palestine and Pheenicia. 

All the tribes through whose territory this trade passed were 
much enriched by it, partly through their profit as merchants, 
partly through the taxes which were imposed upon goods in 
transit. 

“Tt is a common phenomenon to find very wealthy tribes among 
these races,” says Heeren. ‘None of the tribes among the Arabian 
nomads seem to have made enormous profits earlier by means of 
the caravan trade than the Midianites, who were accustomed to 
travel along the northern boundary of this country, near Pheenicia 
therefore. It was a caravan of Midianite merchants, laden with 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 195 


spices, balsam, and myrrh, on its way from Arabia to Egypt, to 
which Joseph was sold. (Genesis xxxvii, 28.) The booty (cap- 
tured by Gideon when he repelled an invasion of the Midianites 
into Canaan) which the Israelites took from this people in the 
form of gold was so great as to cause astonishment, and this metal 
was sO common among them that they made of it not only adorn- 
ments for themselves, but even the neck-pieces for their animals 
were of gold.” ‘Thus, we read in the Book of Judges, viii: “And 
Gideon arose and slew Zebah and Zalmunna, and took away the 
ornaments that were on their animals’ necks. . . . And Gideon 
said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that you would 
give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden 
earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.). . . . And the weight 
of the golden earrings which he requested was one thousand and 
seven hundred shekels’ of gold; besides ornaments, and collars, 
and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and besides 
the chains that were on their animals’ necks.” 

Heeren now discusses the Edomites and continues: ‘“The Greeks 
classed all the nomadic tribes that wandered about Northern 
Arabia under the name of the Nabatzan Arabs. Diodorus, who 
excellently describes their mode of life, also does not fail to men- 
tion their caravan trade with Yemen. ‘A not inconsiderable num- 
ber of them,’ he says, ‘make it their business to bring to the 
Mediterranean Sea the incense, the myrrh, and other precious 
spices which they receive from them that come from Happy 
Arabia.’” (Diodorus, ii, page 390.) 

“The wealth thus acquired by the various desert tribes was 
great enough to arouse the greed of Greek warriors. One of the 
staple centers for the merchandise passing through the territory 
‘of the Edomites was the fortified town of Petra, after which 
Northwestern Arabia is named Arabia Petra. Demetrius Polior- 
ketes attempted to assault and plunder this town.” * 

We must consider the Israelites in their nomadic period as 
resembling their neighbors the Midianites. Even Abraham is 

2 One shekel of gold equals 16.8 grammes or about $11. 


8Heeren, Ideen iiber die Politik, den Verkehr, und den Handel der vor- 
nehmsten Vilker der alten Welt, 1817, vol. i, II, pp. 84-86. 


196 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


reported to have been very rich, not only in cattle, but also in 
silver and gold. (Genesis xiii, 2.) Nomadic shepherds could 
have obtained wealth only by trade. But their later condition 
in Canaan was by no means calculated to restrict or weaken the 
commercial spirit acquired by them from their nomad condition. 
For the situation of this country permitted them to continue their 
part in the trade between Egypt and Babylonia, and to profit by 
this trade, partly by conducting and advancing it, partly by dis- 
turbing it, by falling upon trading caravans from their mountain 
fortifications, and plundering or imposing toll upon them. It 
must not be forgotten that trade and banditry were then two 
closely related professions. 

“Even before the Israelites came to Canaan, trade was highly 
developed in this country. In the Tell-el-Amarna Letters (of 
the Fifteenth Century before Christ) caravans are mentioned 
that traveled through the country under armed protection.” * 

But we have a record as early as the year 2000 B.c. concern- 
ing the intimate commercial relations between Palestine and 
Egypt as well as the countries on the Euphrates. 

Jeremias (a Privatdozent at the University of Leipzig, not the 
Hebrew prophet) cites the contents of a papyrus of that period in 
his own words as follows: 

“The Bedouin tribes of Palestine are therefore in intimate con- 
tact with the cultural land of Egypt. Their sheiks, as we learn 
from the papyrus, occasionally frequent the court of Pharaoh and 
are informed as to conditions in Egypt. Envoys travel to and 
fro with written messages between the Euphrates territory and 
Egypt. These Asiatic Bedouins are by no means barbarians. 
The barbarous tribes combated by the Egyptian King are ex- 
pressly mentioned as in contrast to them. The Bedouin sheiks 
also joined together for the purpose of making military cam- 
paigns against ‘the princes of peoples’.” ° 

In his Commercial History of the Jews in Antiquity, Herzfeld 
treats in detail the caravan routes passing through or in the vicin- 
ity of Palestine. He surmises that these communications “were 


4Franz Buhl, Die sozialen Verhiltnisse der Israeliten, 1899, p. 76. 
5 Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients, 1906, p. 300. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 197 


perhaps of even greater commercial importance in antiquity than 
our railroads are to us”. 

“Such a route led from Southwestern Arabia, parallel to the 
coast of the Red Sea and its #lanitic Gulf, carrying the products 
of Happy Arabia as well as of Ethiopia and a number of the lat- 
ter’s hinterlands, as far as Sela, later called Petra, about seventy 
kilometers to the South of the Dead Sea. Another caravan route 
brought Babylonian and Indian products from Gerrha, on the 
Persian Gulf, straight across Arabia, likewise to Petra. From 
Petra three routes branch out: one to Egypt with branches on the 
left to the Arabian ports on the Mediterranean, a second to Gaza, 
with an important continuation to the North; a third along the 
eastern shores of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, to Damascus. 
Ailat, at the very head of the 4lanitic Gulf, to which it gave its 
name, had already become a staple center for the merchandise 
of the countries further to the South, and also was connected by a 
short route with Petra. The route going from Gaza to the North, 
already mentioned, passed through the lowlands of Judea and 
Samaria, terminating in the plains of Jisreel, where it met another 
route from the East and proceeding to Acco. Of the merchandise 
flowing in by these manifold routes, that intended for Pheenicia 
was partly transshipped in the Arabian seaports above mentioned, 
or at Gaza and Acco, for the road from the latter town to Tyre 
and Sidon was a very rocky one and not rendered practicable 
for land transportation until much later. The much-frequented 
caravan route from the East, already mentioned, went from 
Babylon to the middle course of the Euphrates, then through 
the Arabian-Syrian desert, in which Palmyra later flourished, and 
after proceeding for a short distance along the eastern bank of 
the Upper Jordan, it crossed this river and ran through the plains 
of Jisreel until it reached the sea. Shortly before touching the 
Jordan, it entered the route already mentioned, leading from 
Gilead, which we have seen was already used in the time of 
Joseph; and we have already learned that this route was met in 
the plains of Jisreel by the route from Gaza; but presumably the 
road which passed from Palestine to Egypt according to Genesis 
XXXVli, 253; xli, 57) also started from Gaza. . . . We cannot prove 


198 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that these (these commercial routes and the fairs held at their 
intersections) for a long time had any influence on the Israelites, 
from any facts recorded in history, nor can we estimate such an 
influence, but there is no doubt that it necessarily was present, 
and this assumption will shed light on many a modest old passage 
reflecting such influence.” ° 

Luxury and export industries, and also art, flourished much 
less among the Israelites than did trade, possibly because the 
Israelites had ceased to be nomads at a time when handicraft 
had already been developed to a high level among their neigh- 
bors. Articles of luxury obtained by trade were better and 
cheaper than those manufactured by domestic artisans. The 
result was that such work was limited to the simplest articles. 
Even among the Pheenicians, who became a cultural nation at a 
much earlier date, the progress of industry was retarded by the 
competition of the Egyptian and Babylonian goods in which the 
Phoenicians traded. “It is hardly likely that the Phcenicians were 
superior in the field of industry to the inhabitants of the rest of 
Syria. Herodotus is probably right when he says that the first 
Phoenicians who landed on the coast of Greece offered their wares, 
which were not products of their home, but of Egypt and As- 
syria, in other words of the hinterland of Syria. The large cities 
of Pheenicia did not become predominating industrial cities until 
they had lost their political independence and a considerable por- 
tion of their commercial relations.” * 

Perhaps the development of handicraft was really hindered 
also by the eternal condition of war. At any rate it is certain 
that handicraft did not develop far. The prophet Ezekiel, in his 
lament over Tyre, very fully describes the latter’s trade, includ- 
ing that with Israel. The exports of the Israelites were exclu- 
sively agricultural in nature: ‘Judah, and the land of Israel, they 
were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minith, 
and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm” (xxvii, 17). 

When David made Jerusalem his capital, King Hiram of Tyre 
sent him “cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons: and they 


6 Handelsgeschichte der Juden, pp. 22-25. 
7R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phonizier, 1889, p. 238. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 199 


built David an house” (II Samuel v, 11). The same thing took 
place in the time of Solomon at the building of the Temple. 
Solomon in exchange paid Hiram annually 20,000 measures of 
wheat and twenty measures of pure oil (I Kings, v, 11). 

Without highly developed luxury crafts, in other words without 
art crafts, no plastic or graphic arts can flourish and attain even 
the presentation of the human form, transcend the mere indica- 
tion of the human type, individualize and idealize its subjects. 

Such an art can be based only on a high level of trade, pro- 
viding the artist with the most varied materials in many qualities, 
and thus enabling him to choose those most suitable for his pur- 
poses. Furthermore, a far-reaching specialization, and a host of 
experiences accumulated by generations in the treatment of these 
various materials, coupled finally with a high regard for the 
artist, elevating him above the level of being obliged to labor, and 
granting him leisure, joy and energy, are also necessary. 

We find all these elements united only in great commercial 
cities with a vigorous and ancient handicraft. In Thebes and 
Memphis, in Athens, and later, beginning with the Middle Ages, 
in Florence, Antwerp and Amsterdam, the graphic arts attained 
their highest development on the basis of an energetic handicraft 
system. ‘This the Israelites lacked, and this lack had an effect 
also on their religion. 


c. The Conception of God in Ancient Israel 


Conceptions of divinity among the natural primitive peoples 
are extremely vague and confused, by no means so sharply de- 
fined as we later find them in the mythologies turned out by the 
scholars. The various divinities are neither conceived in clear 
outlines, nor even sharply distinguished one from another; they 
are unknown, mysterious personages, having an influence on na- 
ture and man, bestowing happiness or unhappiness upon the latter, 
but actually more hazy and more indefinite in outline, at first, 
than the visions of dreams. 

The only definite distinctions between the various divinities 
consist in their localizations. Every locality that especially 
stimulates the imagination of primitive man seems to him to be 


200 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the seat of a specific divinity. High mountains or single cliffs, 
groves in peculiar positions and sometimes even a single ancient 
tree, springs, and caves, thus acquire a sort of sanctity as the 
homes of gods. But even a peculiarly shaped stone or bit of 
wood may be considered the domicile of a divinity, a sacred ob- 
ject, the possession of which assures to them that own it the aid 
of the god it shelters. Each tribe, each race tried to acquire 
such a sacred object, such a fetish. This is true also of the 
Hebrews, whose conception of God was at first on the level we 
have just described, and far removed from monotheism. The 
sacred relics of the Israelites seem at first to have been nothing 
more or less than fetishes, beginning with the “idol” (teraphim), 
which Jacob steals from his father-in-law Laban, up to the Ark 
of the Covenant, in which Yahveh dwells, and which bestows vic- 
tory and rain and wealth upon him who rightly holds it. The 
sacred stones worshiped by the Phoenicians and Israelites were 
named “Bethel” or House of God. 

The divinities of the various localities and fetishes are not yet 
definitely individualized at this stage; often their names are not 
different; for instance, among the Israelites and Phoenicians 
many gods were called El (plural Elohim), while others were 
named Baal (“the master’) by the Phoenicians. “In spite of 
their identical names all these Baals were originally considered 
to be absolutely distinct creatures. We frequently find there is 
no other way of distinguishing them than by adding to their names 
the name of the place in which the god in question was wor- 
shiped.” ° 

A more distinct differentiation between the various divinities 
in the popular consciousness did not become possible until after 
the graphic and plastic arts were developed far enough to under- 
take to individualize and idealize human forms, to create definite 
figures with personal characteristics, but also involving a charm, 
a majesty, a greatness, or an awfulness, that made them superior 
to the forms of common men. Thus polytheism was given a mate- 
rial foundation; the invisible ones now became visible, and there- 
fore capable of being present in the same manner in the minds 


8R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phonizier, pp. 183, 184. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 201 


of all; now the various gods were permanently differentiated 
from each other, all confusion between them having disappeared. 
From now on it became possible to distinguish and individualize 
from the mass of innumerable spiritual beings dwelling in wild 
confusion in the imaginations of primitive man, certain specific 
characters. 

In Egypt we can distinctly trace the increase in the number of 
specific gods as the graphic and plastic arts proceed in their de- 
velopment. Nor is it an accident that we find that Greece not 
only attains the highest development of the art industries and of 
the depiction of human beings in plastic art, but also the most 
manifold and distinct individualization of its divinities, both of 
these attainments being achieved simultaneously. 

The advance made by industrially and artistically developed 
nations, in displacing the fetish, the habitation of the spirit or 
god, by the image of the god, was not accomplished by the Israel- 
ites owing to the backwardness of their industry and art. In 
this respect also their evolution came to a stop on the level of 
the Bedouin mode of thought. It never occurred to them to 
represent their own gods in images. Such divine images as they 
became acquainted with were only the images of gods of foreign 
tribes, of enemies, gods imported from abroad or imitated from 
foreign models. Hence the hatred shown by patriots for these 
images. 

This was due to a retarded development, which simultaneously, 
however, made it easier for the Israelites to accomplish the step 
that freed them from polytheism when they became acquainted 
with the philosophical and ethical monotheism that arose in vari- 
ous large cities, at the culmination of ancient civilization, for 
reasons which we have already pointed out. Where the image 
of the god had taken firm root in the imagination of the people, a 
firm foothold had thus been gained by polytheism, which was not 
easily weakened. On the other hand the vagueness of the divine 
image, as well as the identity of names of divinities in the most 
varied localities, paved the way for a popularization of the idea 
of a single god, as opposed to whom all other invisible spirits are 
only subordinate creatures. It is at any rate not an accident that 


202 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


all the monotheistic national religions are derived from nations 
who were still at the nomadic stage of thought and had developed 
no important industry or art: besides the Jews, it was the Persians 
and later the Islamic Arabs who accepted monotheism as soon 
as they came in contact with a higher urban culture. Not only 
Islam but also the Zend religion must be reckoned with the 
monotheistic religions. The latter also knows only a single 
Master and Creator of the world, Auramazda. Angromainju 
(Ahriman) is a lesser spirit somewhat like Satan. 

The fact that backward stages more easily accept and develop 
progress, than do those stages that are further advanced, may 
seem paradoxical, but it is a fact of which we have evidence even 
in the evolution of physical organisms. Highly evolved forms 
are frequently less adaptable and perish more easily, while lower 
forms, whose organs are less specialized, may be able to adapt 
themselves more readily to changed conditions, and are therefore 
in a better place to further the course of evolution. 

But the development of man’s organs is not only an unconscious 
one; in addition to his bodily organs, man consciously develops 
other artificial ones, whose construction he may learn from oth- 
ers. So far as these artificial forms are concerned, individual 
persons or groups may therefore skip entire stages in evolution, 
but of course only after the higher stage has already been reached 
before them by others from whom they acquire it. It is a matter 
of common knowledge, for instance, that electric illumination was 
more quickly introduced in many peasant villages than in the large 
cities, which had already invested large quantities of capital in gas 
illumination. The peasant village could make the leap from the 
oil lamp to the electric light by skipping the stage of illuminating 
gas; but this was rendered possible only by the fact that techno- 
logical progress in the large cities had already acquired the ability 
to produce electric light. The peasant village would not have 
developed this knowledge of its own account. Thus monotheism 
was more readily accepted by the masses of the Jews and Per- 
sians than by the masses of the Egyptians, Babylonians and 
Hellenes, but the notion of monotheism had first to be constructed 
by the philosophers of these highly advanced cultural nations. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 203 


But the period we are treating now, namely, the period before 
the Exile, had not yet reached the monotheistic stage. A primi- 
tive world of the gods still prevailed. 


d. Trade and Philosophy 


Trade develops different mental faculties than handicraft and 
art. 

In his Critique of Political Economy and later in his Capital, 
Karl Marx points out the twofold character of labor as repre- 
sented in commodities. Each commodity is both an article of 
consumption and an article of exchange, and therefore the labor 
involved in it may be simultaneously considered both as a special, 
specific kind of labor—such as the labor of weaving, or pottery, 
or forging—and as abstract human labor in general. 

The specific productive activity which produces specific arti- 
cles of consumption is particularly interesting to the consumer, 
who requires such specific consumption values. If he needs cloth, 
he is interested in the labor applied in the production of this 
cloth for the simple reason that it is this specific cloth-producing 
labor. But to the producer of the goods also—meaning as a rule, 
in the stage of evolution which we are now treating, not yet wage 
laborers, but independent peasants, artisans, artists, or their slaves 
—labor is important only as the specific activity, enabling the 
producer to produce specific products. 

But the attitude of the merchant is different. His activity 
consists in purchasing cheap to sell dear. What specific variety 
of commodities he buys or sells is indifferent to him in the last 
analysis, provided only he finds a purchaser. To be sure, he is 
‘interested in the quantity of labor which is socially necessary, 
both at the point of purchase and the point of sale, as well as at 
the time of purchase and at the time of sale, for the production 
of the commodities in which he deals, for this element has an 
effect in determining their price, but he is interested in this labor 
only as general human labor imparting value to commodities, 
abstractly, not concrete labor, producing specific consumption 
values. Of course the merchant does not think of the matter 
in so many words, for it has taken man a long time to reveal the 


204 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


determination of value by universal human labor. As a matter 
of fact, it required the genius of a Karl Marx, at a highly ad- 
vanced stage in the production of commodities, to analyze this 
condition completely. But even thousands of years before him, 
abstract general human labor acquires a tangible expression as 
contrasted with the concrete forms of labor, to grasp which not 
the slightest power of abstraction is necessary, namely, in money.° 
Money is the representative of the general human labor involved 
in every commodity; it represents not a specific kind of labor, 
not the labor of the weaver or potter or smith, but any labor, all 
labor, today one kind, tomorrow another. But the merchant is 
interested in the commodity only as representing money, not in 
its specific usefulness, but in its specific price. 

The producer—peasant, artisan, artist—is interested in the 
peculiar nature of his work, the peculiarity of the material which 
he is to manipulate; and he will increase the productivity of his 
labor the more, as he becomes more specialized in it. His spe- 
cific work chains him, however, to a specific place, to his land or 
his workshop. Therefore the special limitation of the work on 
which he is engaged will produce a certain mental limitation in 
him to which the Greeks gave the name banausia (derived from 
banausos, the artisan). ‘‘Though the smiths, carpenters, and 
shoemakers may be skilled in their specialties,” says Socrates in 
the Fifth Century before our era, “most of them are slavish 
souls; they know not what is beautiful, good and righteous.”” The 
Jew Jesus Sirach about the year 200 B.c. expressed the same 
thought. Useful though handicraft may be, he says, the artisan 
is nevertheless useless in politics, in jurisprudence, in the dis- 
semination of moral culture. 


9 Money appears as a measure of value earlier than as an instrument of 
circulation. It is used as such even in the days of barter: thus we read of 
Egypt that men were accustomed “to make use of bars of copper (utes) 
weighing 91 grams, not yet in the form of actual money, for which all other 
commodities could be exchanged, but already as a measure of value in the 
exchange of commodities, by means of which the commodities being exchanged 
could be estimated. Thus, once in the New Empire an ox, valued at 119 utes 
is paid for by means of a cane with inlaid work valued at 25 utes, another at 
12 utes, eleven jugs of honey at 11 utes, etc. Later the Ptolemaic copper cur- 
rency was established on this basis.” (Eduard Meyer, Die wirtschaftliche 
Entwicklung des Altertums, 1895, p. 11.) 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 205 


Only the machine will make it possible to abolish this mental 
limitation for the masses of the workers; but only the abolition 
of the capitalistic mode of production will create the conditions 
under which the machine may fulfill in the most complete manner 
its magnificent task of liberating the working masses. 

The merchant’s activities have an entirely different effect on 
him than have those of the artisan. He cannot afford to content 
himself with the knowledge of a special branch of production in 
a special region; the farther his interest extends, the more 
branches of production it embraces, the more regions, with their 
specific conditions of production and their specific requirements, 
the better will he be able to choose those commodities whose sale 
at the moment is most profitable; those markets, in which he can 
buy most profitably as well as those where he can make the most 
profitable sales. But in spite of the great value of the products 
and markets with which he is concerned, he is interested in the 
last analysis only in price conditions, in other words, in the con- 
ditions of various quantities of abstract human labor, in other 
words, in abstract numerical relations. As trade develops more 
and more, as purchase and sale are further removed from each 
other in space and in time, the more varied the money conditions 
with which the merchant must deal, the greater the divergence 
between the purchase and payment times, and the more advanced 
the stage of development of the credit system and interest pay- 
ment, the more complicated and varied do these numerical rela- 
tions become. Therefore trade must stimulate mathematical 
thought, and simultaneously abstract thought. But while trade at 
the same time extends the horizon beyond local and occupational 
limitations, imparting to the merchant a knowledge of the most 
varied climates and soils, the most varied stages of civilization, 
and modes of production, it stimulates him to institute compari- 
sons, enables him to discover the general element in the mass of 
particular details, the necessary element in the mass of accidentals, 
the recurring element which will result again and again from cer- 
tain conditions. The power of abstraction is thereby immensely 

developed, as well as by mathematical thought, while handicraft 


206 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


rather develops the sense for the concrete, but also for the surface 
rather than for the essence of things. It is not the “productive” 
activities, agriculture and handicraft, but “unproductive” trade, 
which develops those mental faculties that lie at the basis of sci- 
entific study. 

But this does not mean that trade of itself creates such sci- 
entific investigation. Disinterested thought, the search for 
truth, not for personal advantage—these are precisely most lack- 
ing in the merchant. The peasant as well as the artisan live by 
the labor of their hands only. The wealth accessible to them 
has very definite limits; but within these limits it is certain to be 
obtained by any healthy average individual, unless war or over- 
powerful natural forces undermine and impoverish the entire 
community. To have aspirations that look higher than the aver- 
age is under such conditions neither necessary nor promising. 
These callings are therefore characterized by a cheerful accept- 
ance of their inherited status, so long as capital, usually in the 
form of usurious capital, does not conquer and oppress them or 
their rulers. 

But trade, with its manipulation of general human labor, pro- 
ceeds quite differently than does handicraft, with its concrete, use- 
ful labor. The success of the latter is strictly limited by the 
capacity of the individual; the success of trade knows no bounds. 
The profit in trade finds its limits only in the quantity of money, 
of capital, which the trader possesses, and this quantity may be 
extended indefinitely. On the other hand, this trade is exposed 
to far greater vicissitudes and dangers than is the constant 
monotony of peasant artisan labor in simple commodities pro- 
duction. ‘The merchant is constantly hovering between the ex- 
tremes of the most luxurious wealth and absolute ruin. The pas- 
sion for gain is in such cases stimulated far more effectively than 
among the producing classes. The merchant is characterized by 
insatiable avarice, but also by the most brutal cruelty both 
toward his competitors and toward the objects of his exploitation. 
To this day, this condition is most repulsively apparent to those 
who live by their own labor, in all places where the exploiting 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 207 


tendency of capital does not encounter vigorous resistance; for 
instance, in the colonies. 

This is not a mode of thought that encourages a personal dis- 
interested, scientific study. Trade develops the necessary ability 
for this purpose, but not its application for scientific purposes. 
On the contrary, where trade secures an influence over learning, 
its effect is only in the direction of doctoring the results of learn- 
ing for its own purposes, of which our present-day bourgeois 
learning presents numerous examples. 

Scientific thought could only be developed in a class that was 
endowed with all the gifts, experiences and knowledge involved 
in trade, but also liberated from the necessity of earning a living, 
and therefore possessing the necessary leisure, opportunity, and 
pleasure in disinterested investigation, in the solution of prob- 
lems without regard to their immediate, practical, and personal 
outcome. Philosophy was developed only in great commercial 
centers, and only in those centers in which other elements besides 
trade were present, whose wealth or whose social position gave 
them leisure and freedom. In a number of Greek commercial 
cities these were the great landed proprietors, whose slaves freed 
them from the need to work, and who lived not in the country, 
but in the city, who were not limited to the rude physical prowess 
of the country squire, but also were subject to the influences of 
the town and its large-scale trade. 

Such a class of large landed proprietors, living and philoso- 
phizing in the cities, seems to have appeared only in maritime 
towns whose hinterland was just large enough to produce such a 
country nobility, but not large enough to keep the latter away 
from the town and to turn their attention to extending their pos- 
sessions in land. These conditions are found particularly in the 
Greek seaport towns. But the hinterland of the Pheenician sea- 
port towns was too insignificant to produce such great estates. 
In these communities, everyone lived by trade. 

In those cities, on the other hand, that were surrounded by 
large land territory, the great landed proprietors seem to have 
remained more under the influence of country life, to have devel- 
oped rather the mode of thought of the country squire. In the 


208 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


great commercial centers of Central Asia, the greatest degree of 
liberation from labor, and the smallest exposure to the claims of 
practical business, were enjoyed by the priests of various places 
of worship. Not a few among these places became important 
and wealthy enough to be able to support permanently a number 
of priests of whom little work was demanded. The same social 
task that fell to the aristocracy in the Greek seaport towns was 
the lot of the priests at the places of worship in the great com- 
mercial centers of the oriental continent, particularly Egypt and 
Babylonia; namely, the development of scientific thought, of 
philosophy. But this condition imposed a limitation on oriental 
thought from which Greek thought remained free: connection 
and reference to religious worship. Philosophy’s loss was reli- 
gion’s gain, and the gain of the priests. While the priests in 
Greece were simple attendants at worship, guardians of the places 
ef worship and performers of religious rites in them, they became 
in the great commercial centers of the Orient the preservers and 
administrators of all knowledge, scientific as well as social: mathe- 
matics, astronomy, medicine, history, and law. Their influence 
on state and society was thereby enormously increased. But re- 
ligion itself was enabled in these regions to achieve a spiritual 
intensification such as Greek mythology was not capable of, as 
Hellenic philosophy soon rejected the mythology, making no at- 
tempt to imbue its naive conceptions with more profound knowl- 
edge, or to reconcile the two. 

The religion of ancient Greece probably received its sensual, 
vigorous, and joyous artistic character by reason of the elevation 
that had been reached by the reproductive arts, as well as by 
reason of the fact that its philosophy steered clear of the priests. 
On the other hand, in a region with a vigorous international trade, 
but not possessing the reproductive arts, without a secular aris- 
tocracy having intellectual inclinations and needs, but with a 
fully developed priesthood, a religion that had not brought forth 
an early development of polytheism, with sharply defined divine 
personalities, would more easily assume an abstract and spir- 
itual character, while the divinity might more easily change from 
a personality into an idea or conception. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 209 


€e. Trade and Nationality 


Trade has another influence upon human thought in addition 
to the one just analyzed. It is an immense stimulus to national 
feeling. We have already mentioned the limitations of the peas- 
ant and bourgeois horizon as opposed to the wide horizon of the 
merchant. The latter acquires this wide horizon by reason of 
the fact that his ambitions are constantly increasing, taking him 
away from the place in which the accident of birth has placed 
him, This is made most clear in the case of the maritime na- 
tions, in ancient times the Phcenicians and Greeks, the former 
venturing far beyond the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean, 
the latter opening up the Black Sea. Trade by land did not permit 
such extensive expeditions. And maritime trade presupposed a 
high degree of skill, particularly in ship-building; it was a trade 
between superior and inferior nations, the latter easily subdued, 
leading to the foundation of colonies by the commercial people. 
Trade by land was earliest and most easily conducted by nomads 
who visited more highly developed tribes, among whom they 
already found a surplus of products of agriculture and industry. 
There was no possibility in such cases of founding colonies by 
means of isolated expeditions. Occasionally a number of no- 
madic tribes might unite in order to plunder or conquer the more 
wealthy and advanced country, but even then they did not come 
as colonists, as the bearers of a higher culture. But such unions 
of nomadic tribes were very rarely realized, and then only under 
extraordinary circumstances, since the very nature of nomadic 
cattle-breeding isolates the various tribes and gentes, even families, 
from each other, scattering them over great distances. The trad- 
ers belonging to these tribes could as a rule penetrate into the 
rich and powerful community with which they were trading, only 
as tolerated supplicants. 

This is true also of the traders belonging to the small tribes who 
had settled down on the thoroughfare of nations between Egypt 
and Syria. Like the Phceenicians-and Greeks, these tribes also 
established settlements in the countries with which they were trad- 

ing, from Babylonia to Egypt, but they are not colonists in the 


210 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


strict sense of the word, not powerful cities, not instruments for 
the control and exploitation of barbarians by a civilized nation, 
but weak communities of supplicants, surrounded by powerful 
and highly civilized cities. It was all the more necessary for 
the members of these communities to remain closely associated 
together as opposed to the strangers among whom they lived, and 
all the stronger became their desire to secure power and prestige 
for their own nation, as their own safety and prestige among 
strangers and therefore also the conditions of their commercial 
activity, depended on such recognition. 

Everywhere, even in the Nineteenth Century, as I have already 
pointed out in my book on Thomas More,’° the merchant class is 
simultaneously the most international and most national section 
of society. But in the case of merchants belonging to small 
races, who were exposed without defense to much ill-usage abroad, 
this national feeling, this longing for a national cohesion and a 
national prestige, as well as their hatred for strangers, necessarily 
increase more strongly. 

Such was the situation of the Israelitic traders. The Israelites 
probably went to Egypt rather early in their history, perhaps when 
they were merely wandering cattle-breeders, long before they be- 
came permanent inhabitants of Canaan. We have evidences con- 
cerning Canaanitic immigrants into Egypt that are of very early 
date, perhaps extending back into the third millennium before 
Christ. Eduard Meyer says, on this subject: 

‘“‘A famous painting in the grave of Khnemhotep, in Benihassan, 
shows us a Bedouin family consisting of thirty-seven persons, 
led by their chieftain Basha, traveling toward Egypt in the sixth 
year of the reign of Usertesen III." They are called Amu, which 
means Canaanites, and their facial outlines clearly designate them 
as Semites. They wear the many-colored garments which had 
been popular in Asia from the most ancient times, are armed 
with bows and lances, and lead asses and goats with them; one of 
them also is able to play the lyre. They bring with them the 


10 Thomas More und seine Utopie, by Karl Kautsky. Stuttgart: J. H. W. 
Dietz, Nachf., 1888 —TRANSLATOR. 

11 A monarch of the twelfth dynasty, which extended approximately from 
2100 to 1900 B.c., possibly beginning a few centuries earlier. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL FAK 


precious possession of meszemut to dye the eyebrows. They now 
demand admission, in which connection they apply to the Count 
of Menatchufu, Khnemhotep, to whom the mountain lands are 
subject. A royal scribe Neferhotep introduces them to the latter 
for further dispatch and to report to the king. Other scenes like 
those depicted here might often have taken place, and doubtless 
Canaanitic traders and artisans settled down in the Eastern cities 
of the Delta in great numbers, where we shall have occasion to 
find them again. Vice versa, Egyptian traders surely came quite 
often to Syrian cities. Even though it had to pass through the 
hands of many intermediaries, Egyptian trade very probably ex- 
tended as far as Babylonia even at this early period.” 

A few centuries after this time, about the year 1800 B.c., at a 
time when Egyptian society was disintegrating, Northern Egypt 
was conquered by the Hyksos, doubtless Canaanitic wandering 
tribes, who were enticed and enabled by the weakness of the 
Egyptian Government to invade the rich land of the Nile, where 
they maintained themselves for more than two centuries. “The 
importance of the rule of the Hyksos for world history consists 
in the fact that it was they that established the active connection 
between Egypt and the Syrian provinces that has never since been 
broken. Canaanitic merchants and artisans came to Egypt in 
great numbers, Canaanitic proper names and forms of worship 
are therefore encountered in the New Empire, Canaanitic words 
began to penetrate into the Egyptian language. How active this 
intercourse was is shown by the circumstance that a’medical work 
written about the year 1550 B.c. contains a prescription for the 
eyes written by an Amu from Kepni, most probably the Pheenician 
city of Byblos.” *? 

We have no reason to assume that the Amu, the Semitic 
Bedouins and city-dwellers to the East and Northeast of Egypt, 
who went to Egypt, did not also include Hebrews, even though 
the latter are not specifically named. On the other hand, it is 
difficult to determine today what would be regarded as the his- 
torical nucleus of the legends of Joseph, the sojourn of the He- 
brews in Egypt, and their departure under Moses. To assume 


* 12 Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des alten Aegyptens, 1887, pp. 182, 210. 


212 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that they are identical with the Hyksos, as Josephus does, is not 
feasible. But so much seems to be certain, that not all of Israel, 
but certain families and caravans of Hebrews came to Egypt at an 
early date, where, depending on the varying conditions of affairs 
in the country, they were treated more or less favorably, now 
being received with open arms, and then tormented and driven 
out as “undesirable” foreigners. 

This is the typical lot of such setttlements of foreign traders, 
coming from weak tribes, after settling in powerful empires. 

The “Diaspora,” the dispersal of the Jews throughout the world, 
certainly does not begin as late as the destruction of Jerusalem 
by the Romans, nor with the Babylonian Exile, but much earlier; 
it is a natural consequence of trade, a phenomenon shared by the 
Jews with most commercial peoples. But it should not be for- 
gotten that agriculture, as in the case of most of these tribes, 
remained the principal source of livelihood for the Israelites also, 
up to the time of their Exile. Formerly trade had constituted 
only an avocation for the nomadic cattle-breeders. After they had 
settled down and a division of labor had been introduced, and the 
traveling merchant became differentiated from the peasant, who 
lived on the soil, the number of merchants remained relatively 
small, the peasant determining the character of the people. And 
the number of Israelites who lived abroad was small in any case 
as compared with those who remained at home. The Hebrews 
were not different from the other peoples in this respect. 

But they were living under conditions which caused the hatred 
for strangers and the strong national feeling, even national sensi- 
tiveness, which had been stimulated in the merchant, to be trans- 
mitted to the body of the population more than is usually the case 
among peasant peoples. 


f. Canaan, a Thoroughfare of Nations 


We have seen how great was the importance of Palestine for 
the trade between Egypt, Babylonia and Syria. From time im- 
memorial these states had therefore been at an effort to secure 
possession of this country. 

In their struggle against the Hyksos, who have been already 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL Zio 


_mentioned (about 1800 B.c. to 1530 B.c.) a warlike spirit had 
been developed in Egypt, but the Hyksos had simultaneously 
much advanced the trade between Egypt and Syria. Therefore, 
after the driving out of the Hyksos, the desire for warlike ex- 
pansion arose among the Egyptians, particularly with the pur- 
pose of controlling the commercial route to Babylonia. They 
advanced up to the Euphrates and occupied Palestine and Syria. 
From the latter country they were soon driven back by the Cheta, 
but in Palestine they maintained themselves longer, from the 
Fifteenth to the Twelfth Centuries p.c. There they also held 
a number of strongholds, among which was Jerusalem. But 
finally the warlike power of Egypt declined, and beginning with 
the Twelfth Century, Egypt was no longer able to hold Palestine, 
while simultaneously the Syrian Chetites were weakened by the 
incipient spread of the Assyrians, and prevented from penetrat- 
ing further to the south. 

Foreign rule in Palestine was thus abandoned for a time. 
This was the opportunity for a group of Bedouin tribes, under 
the general name of Israelites, to enter the country as conquer- 
ors and gradually to occupy it. As yet they had not fully com- 
pleted this process, and were still engaged in active conflict with 
the former inhabitants of the country, when new enemies arose to 
face them in the form of other Bedouin tribes, who were pressing 
behind them toward the “promised land.” Simultaneously, how- 
ever, they encountered on their front line an enemy in the form 
of the inhabitants of the plains separating the mountain country 
under Israelitic control from the sea. ‘These were the Philistines. 
The latter must have felt themselves seriously threatened by the 
advance of so aggressive a people as the Israelites. On the other 
hand the coast plain must have been particularly inviting in the 
eyes of the Israelites, for through this plain there passed the 
main road connecting Egypt with the North. Whoever con- 
trolled this road therefore simultaneously controlled the entire 
foreign trade of Egypt with the North and East. The maritime 
commerce of Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea was at that time 
very unimportant. But if these dwellers on the hills that skirted 
along the plain should turn out to be a combative and predatory 


214 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


people, they must necessarily remain a constant menace to trade 
to and from Egypt, and to the riches yielded by that trade. And 
they were combative and predatory. We are often told of the 
formation of bands of robbers in Israel, for instance, Jephtha, to 
whom “vain men were gathered, and went out with him.” (Judges 
iii, 3.) We often hear also of bandit invasions into the country of 
the Philistines. Thus, we read concerning Samson, that “the 
Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he went down to Ashkelon, 
and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil and gave change 
of garments unto them which expounded the riddle” (Judges xiv, 
19), which means that he was robbing them in order to pay a 
debt. David is also represented in his beginnings as the leader 
of a band of robbers. ‘And everyone that was in distress, and 
everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, 
gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain of them: 
and there were with him about four hundred men.” (I Samuel, 
Xxli, 2.) 

It is not to be wondered at that a condition of almost con- 
stant feud prevailed between the Philistines and the Israelites, 
with the result that the former exerted every effort to put down 
their troublesome neighbors. Pressed on the one side by the 
Bedouins, and on the other by the Philistines, Israel was forced 
into a condition of dependence and distress. It succumbed to 
the Philistines the more readily since the mountain territory in- 
habited by them encouraged the formation of a local particularis- 
tic spirit, a splitting up of clans, while the plains were more likely 
to favor a unification of the various tribes and communities of the 
Philistines for a single great operation. Only when the powerful 
military kingdom of David succeeded in welding the various 
tribes of Israel into a firm unit, did Israel cease to be oppressed. 

Now the Philistines were overthrown, and the last fortified 
cities in the table-land of Canaan, which had still resisted the 
Israelites, were conquered, including Jerusalem, an unusually 
well-situated, almost impregnable spot, which had offered the 
longest resistance to the Israelites, and which controlled all the 
roads entering Palestine from the South. It became the capital 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 25s 


of the kingdom and the seat of the Federal fetish, the Ark of the 
Covenant, in which the war-God Yahveh dwelt. 

David now gained control of the entire trade passing be- 
tween Egypt and the North, and this trade yielded him rich booty, 
enabling him to increase his warlike resources and expand the 
boundary of his state northward and southward. He subjected 
the predatory Bedouin tribes as far as to the Red Sea, rendered 
secure the commercial routes to that sea, and with the aid of the 
Pheenicians, for the Israelites had no knowledge of navigation, 
he began to carry on trade on the Red Sea, which had formerly 
passed by the land route from Southern Arabia (Saba) north- 
ward. It was the golden age of Israel, which, owing to its domi- 
nating position over one of the most important commercial routes 
of that era, was enabled to achieve an intoxicating degree of 
power and wealth. 

And yet precisely this favorable position was destined to effect 
its ruin. For the economic importance of this situation was not 
a secret to the great neighboring states. The more the country 
flourished under David and Solomon, the more it necessarily 
aroused the greed of its powerful neighbors, whose warlike 
strength was again undergoing an improvement just at that time; 
in Egypt particularly, by reason of the fact that the peasant 
militia was being replaced by mercenaries who could more easily 
be used in wars of aggression. To be sure, Egypt did not have 
sufficient strength to conquer Palestine permanently. But so 
much the worse for Israel. Instead of being placed in a state of 
permanent dependence on a great nation, whose power would at 
least have afforded it peace and protection against external 
enemies, it became the play-ball of competing Egyptians and 
Syrians, later of Assyrians also, and Palestine constituted the 
theater of war on which the battles of these hostile powers were 
fought. In addition to the devastation of the wars which it had 
now to fight in the defense of its own interests, there now were 
also the devastations of the great armies that were combating 
there for interests that were absolutely foreign to the inhabitants 
of the country. And the burdens of obligatory tribute and de- 
pendence, which were now imposed upon the Israelites from time 


216 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


to time, were not softened by the fact that these burdens were 
not always imposed by the same masters, that the masters were 
changing constantly with the varying fortunes of war, and that 
each master considered his possession to be a short-lived one, 
that must be exploited to the full at once. 

Palestine was at that time in a position somewhat similar to 
the position of Poland in the Eighteenth Century, or Italy, par- 
ticularly Northern Italy, from the Middle Ages down into the 
Nineteenth Century. Italy and Poland, in these later situations, 
like Palestine at an earlier day, found themselves incapable of 
enforcing a policy of their own, and therefore offered a theater 
of war and an object of exploitation to foreign powers; Poland 
had this relation toward Russia, Prussia, and Austria; Italy 
towards Spain and France, as well as toward the masters of the 
German Empire, later of Austria. And as in the case of Italy 
and Poland, in Palestine also a national schism was taking place, 
probably due to the same reason: in Palestine, as in Italy, the 
various portions of the country were variously influenced by 
neighboring races. The northern portion of the territory, occu- 
pied by the Israelites, was most menaced, also most ruled, by the 
Syrians, and later by the Assyrians. The southern portion, in- 
cluding Palestine and the surrounding country, in other words, 
approximately the territory of the tribe of Judah, was rather 
subject to being menaced by or dependent on Egypt, as the case 
might be. Israel proper therefore seemed sometimes to require a 
different external policy than did Judea. This difference in for- 
eign policy probably became the chief cause of the splitting of 
Israel into two empires, as opposed to the former condition, in 
which the foreign policy had been the cause for the uniting of the 
twelve tribes against the single common enemy threatening all in 
equal manner, namely, the Philistines. 

But the similar situations of Palestine, Italy and Poland neces- 
sarily produced similar effects in another field also: in all these 
countries we find the same nationalistic chauvinism, the same 
national sensitiveness, the same hatred for foreigners, which are 
somewhat more intense than the corresponding feelings produced 
by national oppositions in other races of that day. And this 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 217 


chauvinism must increase, as the unbearable situation of the coun- 
try continues, subjected ceaselessly to the caprices of its great 
neighbors, making it the theater of war for their bandit invasions. 

In view of the importance attained in the Orient by religion, 
for reasons that have been already assigned, chauvinism neces- 
sarily expressed itself even in religion. The active trade relations 
with its neighbors also brought their religious views, forms of 
worship, and divine images into Israel, but the hatred for for- 
eigners, on the other hand, also took the form of a hatred for 
their gods, not because their existence was doubted, but because 
they were considered to be effective aids to the enemy. 

This point does not distinguish the Hebrews from other oriental 
peoples. The ancestral god of the Hyksos in Egypt was Sutech. 
When the Hyksos were finally driven out, the ancestral god also 
was deposed. He was identified with the God of Darkness, Seth 
or Sutech, whom the Egyptians regarded with abhorrence. 

The patriots of Israel and their leaders, the prophets, probably 
were just as much enraged against the foreign gods as German 
patriots in the days of Napoleon were enraged against French 
fashions and French words in the German language. 


g. Class Struggles in Israel 


But the patriots were not contented with merely hating 
strangers. They also felt obliged to rejuvenate the state, to infuse 
it with greater strength. As oppression became more severe from 
without, social disintegration within the Israelitic community 
increased. The growth of trade since the time of David brought 
great wealth into the country. But, as everywhere else in an- 
tiquity, in Palestine also agriculture remained the basis of society, 
and property in land was the most secure and honorable form 
of possession. As in other places, those elements in Palestine 
that had become rich sought to acquire property in land, or, 
already possessing it, to increase it. Here also we note the be- 
ginnings of a tendency toward forming latifundia. This tendency 
was encouraged by the fact that, as in other countries, the peasant 
was “going to the dogs” under the new conditions. While the 
struggles of the Israelites had formerly been mere petty local 


218 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


feuds, not requiring the absence of the peasant militia soldier for 
a long time, nor at long distances from his home, this condition 
was altered as soon as Israel became a great state, and involved 
in the conflicts of great states. Military service was now ruining 
the peasant and making him dependent on powerful neighbors 
who owned money and who now faced him as usurers, with the 
power of driving him out of his land or permitting him to remain 
on it as an indebted slave, working off his debt. Probably the 
latter means was often preferred, for we read little in Palestine 
of slaves belonging to other races. If purchased slaves are to be 
more than an expensive luxury for the private household, if they 
are to become a profitable means of investment in production, they 
necessarily presuppose constant successful wars, allowing plenti- 
ful cheap material in slaves. There was no possibility of this 
process among the Israelites. They belonged for the most part 
to those unhappy tribes who furnished slaves, not made them. 
The owners of latifundia, who needed cheap and dependent labor 
hands, would necessarily much prefer the debtor’s slavery of their 
own fellow countrymen, a system which in other countries also— 
for instance, in Russia at the present time,** since the abolition 
of serfdom—meets with favor among the great landed proprietors 
who are in need of slaves or serfs. 

As this evolution progressed, the military strength of Israel 
necessarily decreased simultaneously with the decrease in free 
peasants, with a resulting weakening of its power of resistance 
to external enemies. Therefore the patriots united with the social 
reformers and populists, in order to check this disastrous tend- 
ency. They summoned the people and the kingdom to combat 
both the foreign gods as well as the enemies of the peasants in 
their own country, and prophesied the destruction of the state 
if it should not be possible to put an end to the oppression and 
the impoverishment of the peasantry. 

“Woe unto them!”’ cried Isaiah, “that join house to house, that 
lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed 
alone in the midst of the earth! In mine ears said the Lord of 


13 The reader will recall that Kautsky wrote these words in 1908, when 
Russia was still ruled by a Tsar.—TRANSLATOR. 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 219 


Hosts: Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and 
fair, without inhabitant.” (v, 8 and 9.) 

And the Prophet Amos proclaimed: 

“Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountains 
of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which 
say unto their masters: ‘Bring and let us drink.’ The Lord God 
hath sworn by his Holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon 
you that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity 
with fish hooks.” (iv, 1 and 2.) 

“Hear this, Oh ye that swallow up the needy, even to make 
the poor of the land to fail, saying: When will the new moon be 
gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath that we may set 
forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and 
falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy the poor 
for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the 
refuse of the wheat? The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of 
Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not 
the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn that dwelleth 
therein?” (Amos viii, 4-8.) 

“The fact that the possessors and rulers were utilizing thé 
government apparatus for giving sanction to the new order of 
things in the form of levies, is clear from the ceaseless laments 
of the prophets as to the existing laws: ‘Woe unto them,’ cries 
the eloquent Isaiah, ‘that decree unrighteous decrees, and that 
write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside the 
needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor 
of my people’ (x, 1). ‘Zion shall be redeemed with judgment’ 
(Isaiah i, 27). ‘The pen of the scribes is in vain’ (Jeremiah 
viii, 8). ‘For ye have turned judgment into gall and the fruit of 
righteousness into hemlock.’ (Amos vi, 12.)” ** 

Luckily for the prophets, they did not live in Prussia or Saxony! 
They would never have seen an end of their court trials for in- 
citing to violence, /ése-majesté, and high treason. 

But energetic though their agitation was, and pressing as were 
the needs from which it sprang, it was impossible for the 


14M. Beer, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Klassenkampfes 1m hebriaischen 
Altertum. Die Neue Zeit, vol. xi, I, p. 447. 


220 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


prophets to meet with any success in society, at least of a per- 
manent kind, though they might occasionally succeed in forcing 
legislation for the alleviation of distress or for the ironing out of 
social contrasts. They could aim only at restoring the peace, at 
holding back the tide of economic evolution. It was impossible 
to do this; the similar efforts of the Gracchi in Rome were doomed 
in advance to failure. 

The destruction of the peasantry, and of the state together 
with the peasantry, was proceeding as irresistibly in Israel as was 
later the case in Rome. But the destruction of the state did not 
proceed by the same slow process of dissolution as in the Roman 
world-empire. Mighty opponents, superior in strength, suddenly 
wiped it out, long before it had reached the end of its native 
vigor. These opponents were the Assyrians and Babylonians. 


hk. The Downfall of Israel 


The imperialistic policy of the Assyrians begins to operate in 
the grand manner about the time of Tiglath-Pileser I (about 1115- 
1050 B.C.), and in spite of temporary interruptions, it brings the 
Assyrian armies closer and closer to Canaan. But these power- 
ful conquerors brought with them a new method of treating the 
vanquished, which was to have a very disastrous effect on the 
Israelites. During their nomad stage, the entire people were 
naturally interested in any military campaign that resulted in an 
advantage to each man among them. Such a campaign was in- 
tended either for mere plunder, or for the conquest of a fruitful 
country, in which the victors would settle down as the aristocratic 
exploiters of the native population. But in the stage of fixed agri- 
culture, the masses of the population, the peasants and artisans, 
no longer had any interest in a war of conquest; but their interest 
in any successful war of defense naturally became larger, for in 
such a war they were menaced with a loss of their liberties and 
their lands in case of defeat. The great merchants, however, were 
in favor of outward expansion by force, for they needed security 
for their commercial routes and markets abroad, which could be 
attained in most cases only by a military occupation of at least 
a few foreign places. The landed nobility also was eager for 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 221 


warlike expansion, for it wished more land and new slaves; equally 
warlike were the kings, eager for an increase in the tax receipts. 

But so long as there was no standing army and no bureaucracy 
which could be cut off from home and transferred to any point, 
a permanent occupation and administration of conquered terri- 
tory by the victor was attended with great difficulties at this eco- 
nomic stage. The victor therefore contented himself as a rule 
with a thorough plundering and weakening of the defeated people, 
and with the promise of the latter to support him and pay certain 
definite tribute to him, but left the ruling classes of the captured 
country in their social position, making no alterations in the coun- 
try’s political institutions. 

The disadvantage of this situation was in the fact that the 
vanquished would seize the first opportunity that offered to shake 
off the hated yoke, so that a new military campaign would be 
required to subject him anew, and such a campaign naturally 
did not end without the infliction of the most extravagant punish- 
ments upon the “rebels.” 

The Assyrians devised a method that promised to give greater 
permanence to their conquests: wherever they encountered stub- 
born resistance, or were met with repeated insurrections, they 
would weaken the people by cutting off its head; in other words, 
by depriving it of its ruling classes, banishing the most distin- 
guished, most wealthy, intelligent and warlike inhabitants, par- 
ticularly of the capital, to some remote region, where the deported 
persons, possessing no subordinate stratum which they could rule, 
were absolutely powerless. The remaining peasants and petty 
artisans, however, now constituted an incoherent mass, incapable 
of offering any strong resistance to the conquerors. 

Salmanassar II (859-825 B.c.) was the first Assyrian king 
who penetrated into Syria proper (Aleppo, Hamath, Damascus), 
and also the first to give us any news of Israel. In a cuneiform 
report of 842 B.c. he mentions, among other things, a tribute 
paid by the Israelitic king, Jehu. And he has a picture repre- 
senting the consignment of this tribute, which is the oldest pic- 
torial representation of Israelitic individuals that we now possess. 
From that time on Israel came into ever closer contact with 


pee FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Assyria, either in its payments of tributes, or in its insurrections, 
while at the same time the above-described practice of banishing 
the upper classes of defeated, particularly of rebellious peoples, 
was developing more and more among the Assyrians. It was only 
a question of time when Israel’s destruction also would come at 
the hands of the unconquered and apparently unconquerable 
Assyrians. No particularly unusual gift of prophecy was needed 
to be able to predict this consummation which the Jewish prophets 
saw so vividly in advance. 

The northern portion of their realm met with its fate under 
King Hosea, who refused tribute to Assyria in 724 B.c., relying 
upon aid from Egypt, which did not come. Salmanassar IV pro- 
ceeded to Israel, defeated Hosea, made him a prisoner, and be- 
sieged his capital Samaria, which could not be taken, however, 
until after a three years’ siege by Sennacherib’s successor Sargon 
(722 B.c.). The “flower of the population” (according to Well- 
hausen), 27,290 persons, according to the Assyrian reports, were 
now carried away to Assyrian and Median cities. The King of 
Assyria put in their place persons brought from rebellious Baby- 
lonian cities, “and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead 
of the children of Israel: and he possessed Samaria and dwelt in 
the cities thereof”? (II Kings xvii, 24). Not the entire population 
of the ten northern tribes of Israel were therefore carried off, 
but only the most distinguished inhabitants of the cities, which 
were then populated with strangers, but this was quite sufficient 
to destroy the nationality of these ten tribes; for the peasant 
alone is incapable of constructing a specific communal life. The 
Israelitic city dwellers and aristocrats who were transplanted to 
Assyria and Media, on the other hand, disappeared in their new 
environment in the course of generations, becoming fused with it. 


zt. The First Destruction of Jerusalem 


There remained of the people of Israel only the city of Jeru- 
salem with its province of Judea. It appeared as if this small 
remnant would soon share the fate of the greater mass, and that 
the name of Israel would thus disappear from the face of the 
earth. But the Assyrians were not destined to take Jerusalem 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 223 


and destroy it. ‘To be sure, the fact that the army of the Assyrian 
Sennacherib, who set out against Jerusalem in 701 B.c., was 
forced to return home because of disturbances in Babylon, thus 
sparing Jerusalem, was merely a postponement. Judea remained 
an Assyrian vassal state that might be swallowed up at any 
moment. 

But beginning with the time of Sennacherib the attention of 
the Assyrians was being gradually diverted northward, for there 
warlike nomads were advancing more and more menacingly, re- 
quiring more and more military strength in order to repel them: 
the Cimmerians, Medes, and Scythians. The latter entered 
Western Asia about 625 B.c., advancing in their course of plunder 
and devastation up to the boundary of Egypt, but scattered, some 
twenty-eight years later, without having founded an empire of 
their own. But they did not disappear without leaving consider- 
able traces behind them; their invasion shook the Assyrian mon- 
archy to its foundations. The latter was therefore exposed to a 
more successful attack by the Medes; Babylon seceded and be- 
came free, while the Egyptians made use of the situation to gain 
control of Palestine. The Judean King Josiah was defeated and 
killed by the Egyptians at Megiddo (609 B.c.), whereupon 
Necho, King of Egypt, appointed Jehoiachin as his vassal in 
Jerusalem. Finally, in 606 B.c., Nineveh was destroyed by a 
coalition of Babylonians and Medes, and the Assyrian Empire 
had come to an end. } 

But this did not save Judea. Babylonia now followed in the 
footsteps of Assur and immediately attempted to gain control of 
the route to Egypt. In this effort the Babylonians under Neb- 
uchadnezzar were opposed by Necho, who had advanced as far as 
Northern Syria. The Egyptians were defeated in the battle of 
Karkemish (605 B.c.), and Judea was made a vassal state of 
Babylonia soon thereafter. Judea was apparently passing from 
hand to hand, having lost all independence. Incited by Egypt, 
Judea in 597 B.c. refused to pay tribute to the Babylonians, but 
this rebellion collapsed almost without a struggle; Jerusalem was 
besieged by Nebuchadnezzar and surrendered unconditionally. 

“And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, 


224 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and his servants did besiege it. And Jehoiachin the king of Judah 
went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his 
servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon 
took him in the eighth year of his reign, and he carried out thence 
all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the 
king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solo- 
mon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the Lord, as the 
Lord had said, and he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the 
princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand cap- 
tives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained save the 
poorest sort of the people of the land. And he carried away 
Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king’s mother, and the king’s 
wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land. Those carried 
he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And all the men of 
might, even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a thou- 
sand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king 
of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.” (II Kings xxiv, 12-16). 

Babylon was continuing to practice the old Assyrian method, 
again not making off with the entire population, but only with the 
royal court, the aristocrats, the men capable of bearing arms and 
the wealthy urban citizens, 10,000 persons in all. The ‘poorest 
sort of the people of the land,”’ probably also of the city, were 
left behind, surely including also a portion of the ruling classes. 
Yet Judea was not destroyed. It was given a new king by the 
master of Babylon. And again, for the last time, the old cycle 
was repeated. The Egyptians incited the new king, Zedekiah, 
to secede from Babylon. 

Thereupon Nebuchadnezzar appeared outside of Jerusalem, 
conquered it and completely wiped out this city, which was so 
intractable and disturbing an element by reason of its dominant 
position along the thoroughfare of nations from Babylon to Egypt 
(586 B.c.). 

“And in the fifth month came Nebuzar-adan, captain of the 
guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem, and he 
burned the house of the Lord, and the king’s house, and all the 
houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burned he with 
fire. And all the army of the Chaldees that were with the captain 


THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL 225 


of the guard brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about. 
Now the rest of the people that were left in the city, and the fugi- 
tives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of 
the multitude, did Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard carry 
away. But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land 
to be vinedressers and husbandmen.”’ (II Kings xxv, 8-12.) 

Likewise, we read in Jeremiah xxxix, 9, 10: ‘Then Nebuzar- 
adan the captain of the guard carried away captive into Babylon 
the remnant of the people that remained in the city, and those 
that fell away, that fell to him, with the rest of the people that 
remained. But Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard left of 
the poor of the people, which had nothing, in the land of Judah, 
and gave them vineyards and fields at the same time.” 

A number of peasant elements therefore remained. For it 
would have been senseless to depopulate the country entirely, to 
leave it without farmers, for then it could not have paid any taxes. 
The Babylonians evidently wished to take away particularly that 
part of the population, as was their practice, which was capable 
of uniting and leading the nation and might thereby become dan- 
gerous to Babylonian supremacy. The peasant alone has rarely 
been able to liberate himself from foreign rule. 

The information given in Jeremiah xxxix becomes easy to un- 
derstand if we recall the formation of latifundia which had been 
taking place in Judea also. It was natural that the latifundia 
should now be broken up and parceled out to the expropriated 
peasants, or that the debtor slaves and tenants should become 
free owners of the soil they cultivated. For their tyrants had 
been the leaders of Judea in its struggle against Babylon. 

According to the Assyrian report, the population of Judea 
under Sennacherib was 200,000, not counting that of Jerusalem, 
which may be estimated at 25,000. The number of the large 
landed proprietors is put at 15,000; 7,000 of these were taken 
away by Nebuchadnezzar after the first conquest of Jerusalem.*® 
He therefore left 8,000 behind. Yet the Book of II Kings, xxiv, 
14, reports that already then only “the poorer sort of the people 
of the land” remained. ‘These 8,000 were subsequently taken 


15 Compare F. Buhl, Die sozialen Verhdlinisse der Israeliten, pp. 52, 53. 


226 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


away at the second destruction. Probably it was their vineyards 
and fields that were given to the “poor of the people, which had 
nothing.” 

Very probably the entire population was not taken away this 
time either; but all of the population of Jerusalem was taken 
away. At any rate, most of the country population was left. But 
what was left ceased to constitute a specific Jewish community. 
The entire national life of the Jews was now concentrated in the 
city-dwellers now living in exile. . 

This national life now obtained a peculiar tinge, owing to the 
peculiar situation of the urban Jews. While the Israelites had 
hitherto been a race that did not differ strongly from the other 
races surrounding it, and therefore had not aroused any particular 
attention among these races, its remnants, which now continued 
to lead a separate national life, developed into a race unlike any 
other in existence. It was not as late as the destruction of Jeru- 
salem by the Romans, but as early as the destruction of Jeru- 
salem by Nebuchadnezzar, that we have the beginnings of the 
abnormal situation of the Jews which makes them a unique 
phenomenon in history. 


II. THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 


a. Banishment 


APPARENTLY Judea had met with the same fate after the de- 
struction of Jerusalem as had the tribes of Israel after the destruc- 
tion of Samaria, but the same fate that eliminated Israel from 
history raised Judea from insignificant oblivion to be one of the 
most powerful factors in the history of the world, owing to the 
circumstance that by reason of the greater distance from Assyria, 
of the natural fortifications of Jerusalem, as well as of the invasion 
by northern nomads, the destruction of Jerusalem took place 
one hundred and thirty-five years later than that of Samaria. 

The Jews were exposed for four generations longer than the ten 
tribes to all those influences mentioned by us as stimulating 
national fanaticism to the highest degree. For this reason, if for 
no other, the Jews went into exile with far more developed national 
feelings than did their northern brothers. But another factor 
working in the same direction was the fact that the Jewish com- 
munity consisted at bottom of a single large city only, together 
with the surrounding territory, while the northern empire had 
been an aggregation of ten tribes, by no means closely connected 
with each other. Judea therefore constituted a far more unified 
and compact mass than Israel. 

Nevertheless, the Judeans would also have lost their nationality 
in exile if they had remained under foreign rule as long as the 
ten tribes. He who is exiled among strangers may long for his 
old home and be unable to strike roots in his new surroundings. 
His exile may even strengthen his national feelings. But it is 
very unusual to find such strong national feelings among the chil- 
dren born in exile, who grow up in the new surroundings and 
know the old conditions only through the tales of their fathers, 
unless the prospect of an early return to their former home is 
kept alive by deprivation of rights, or by unfavorable treatment 


in the foreign country. The third generation, in turn, will hardly 
227 


228 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


remember its nationality, unless, as we have already stated, it is 
constantly maintained in subordination to its surroundings, cut 
off by force from the rest of the population as a separate and 
inferior race, and thus exposed to oppression and maltreatment 
by the dominant race. This seems not to have been the case with 
the Jews transplanted to Assyria and Babylonia, and they would 
therefore have probably lost their nationality and disappeared 
among the Babylonians, if they had remained among them for 
more than three generations. But very soon after the destruction 
of Jerusalem the victorious empire began to totter, and the ban- 
ished groups were permitted to hope for an early return to the 
land of their fathers, and already in the course of the second 
generation this hope was fulfilled, the Jews being enabled to 
return to Jerusalem from Babylon. For the tribes which had 
pressed upon Mesopotamia from the North and destroyed Assyria 
were not very quickly pacified. The most powerful among them 
was the nomadic tribe of the Persians, which destroyed the two 
heirs of Assyrian rule, the kingdoms of the Medes and Baby- 
lonians, and not only reéstablished the Assyrian-Babylonian 
Empire in a new shape, but even enormously extended it, con- 
quering Egypt and Asia Minor into the bargain, and creating for 
the first time a military system and a national administration 
capable of assuring a firm basis of world empire, cementing it 
firmly together and maintaining permanent domestic peace within. 

The conquerors of Babylon had no reason to continue to keep 
away from their homes those who had been conquered and exiled 
abroad by this state. In 538 B.c. Babylon was conquered by 
the Persians without a sword-stroke, which shows how weak the 
city must have been; and in the next year Cyrus, the Persian 
king, already permits the Jews to return home. Their exile had 
not lasted half a century, and yet, so many of them had already 
adapted themselves to the new conditions that only a portion 
took advantage of the permission, not a few remaining in Babylon, 
where they felt more at home. There is very little doubt that 
the Jews would have completely disappeared if Jerusalem had 
shared the fate of Samaria, if the period between its destruction 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 229 


and the conquest of Babylonia by the Persians had been a period 
of one hundred and eighty years instead of fifty years only. 

But short as was the period of Jewish exile, it nevertheless 
produced the most far-reaching changes in Judaism, causing a 
number of tendencies and small beginnings that had been pre- 
viously produced by conditions in Judea to develop and strengthen 
to the full, and imparting extremely characteristic forms to these 
traits, owing to the peculiar situation in which the Jews were 
placed from this time on. 

In exile they continued to exist as a nation, a nation without 
peasants, a nation consisting exclusively of urban dwellers. To 
this day this is one of the most important characteristics of the 
Jews, on which their most essential ‘“‘race traits” are based, which 
actually represent nothing more than the ordinary customs of city 
dwellers accentuated by a long period of urban life, and by the 
absence of new elements supplied by a peasantry, as I pointed 
out as early as 1890.*° 

This condition changed but slightly and only eataeuens after 
their return to Palestine from their banishment, as we shall learn 
in the sequel. 

But the Jews now became not only a nation of city dwellers, but 
also of traders. Industry was not highly developed in Judea, as 
we have seen; it was barely sufficient for simple household needs. 
Among the industrially advanced Babylonians, the Jews were 
therefore at a disadvantage. Military service and government 
administration were also closed to the Jews owing to the loss of 
their independence: what other livelihood remained to city dwell- 
ers but trade? 


While trade had been very important in Palestine from the 
earliest days, it necessarily became the chief occupation of the 
Jews in their banishment. 

But with the increase in their trade there necessarily was in- 
volved an increase in the intelligence of the Jews, their mathe- 
matical sense, their power of mental combination and abstraction. 
But their national misfortune simultaneously provided their in- 

16 Das Judentum, Die Neue Zeit, vol. viii, p. 23 ff. 


230 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


creased acumen with nobler objects than mere personal gain. In 
their foreign surroundings the members of the tribe become even 
more closely united than at home. Their feeling of coherence as 
opposed to strangers becomes stronger, as the individual feels 
himself weaker and more menaced when standing alone. The 
social feelings, the ethical compassion, become more powerful, 
impregnating Jewish ingenuity with the most profound thoughts 
as to the causes of the national misfortune and the means of 
rehabilitating the nation. 

Simultaneously, however, Jewish thought was necessarily much 
stimulated by the splendor of the metropolitan city of Babylon, 
its world traffic, its ancient civilization, its science and philosophy. 
As in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, German thinkers 
were elevated and inspired to their highest and best achievements 
by a sojourn in the Babylon on the Seine, so a sojourn in the 
Babylon on the Euphrates in the Sixth Century B.c. must neces- 
sarily have similarly influenced the Jews and suddenly widened 
their horizon immensely. 

But of course, as in all the oriental commercial centers not 
lying on the shores of the Mediterranean but in the interior of the 
continent, science remained affiliated with religion—fettered to 
religion—in Babylon also, for reasons we have already indicated. 
Therefore all the powerful new impressions expressed themselves 
in a religious form among the Jews; in fact, religion now neces- 
sarily became the more prominent among the Jews by reason of 
the fact that the destruction of their national independence left 
only their common national worship as the sole bond still uniting 
the nation. The priesthood of this worship now constituted the 
only central organization retaining any authority in the eyes of 
the entire people. The tribal organization appears to have 
attained new energy in banishment, the state constitution having 
disappeared.*’ But tribal particularism was not a factor cement- 
ing the nation. Judea now sought to maintain and rescue its 
nation in religion, and the priesthood obtained leadership among 
them as a result. 


17 Compare Frank Buhl, Die sozialen Verhiilinisse der Israeliten, p. 43. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 231 


The Judean priesthood borrowed from the Babylonian priest- 
hood their arrogant claims, but also many of their notions of 
worship. Quite a number of the Biblical legends are of Baby- 
lonian origin; for instance, those of the creation of the world, 
Paradise, the fall from grace, the construction of the Tower of 
Babel, the Deluge. Nor is the strict observance of the Sabbath 
less Babylonian in its origin. The Sabbath was not so strongly 
emphasized by the Jews before the period of banishment. 

“The emphasis thus placed by Ezekiel on keeping the Sabbath 
holy is something entirely new. None of the earlier prophets 
lays such stress on the celebration of the Sabbath. For Jeremiah 
xvii, 19 ff. is not a genuine passage.” ** 

Even after the return from banishment in the Fifth Century 
B.c., it was very difficult to enforce Sabbath observance, “as it 
was too strongly opposed to the old habits’’.’® 

But we may assume that the Jewish priesthood probably ac- 
quired from the highly developed Babylonian priesthood, not only 
popular legends and customs, but also a higher and more spiritual 
conception of divinity, even though we have no direct evidence 
to this effect. 

The conception of divinity among the Israelites had for a long 
time been quite crude. Great as was the care shown by later 
collators and editors of the old stories, to eliminate all traces of 
paganism from them, we still have a number of such traces in the 
versions of these stories that have come down to us. 

Let us recall, for example, the stories connected with Jacob. 
His god not only gives him assistance in questionable transactions 
of every kind, but even lowers himself to the point of wrestling 
with Jacob, in which combat the god is defeated by the human: 
“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him 
until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed 
not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the 
hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him. 
And he said: Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said: I 
will not let thee go except thou bless me. And he said unto him: 


18 B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. ii, p. 17. 
19 Op, cit., p. 187. 


Boz FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said: Thy name 
shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast 
thou power with God and with man, and hast prevailed. And 
Jacob asked him and said: Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. 
And he said: Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? 
And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the 
place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face and my life is 
preserved.” (Genesis xxxli, 24-30.) 

The Great Unknown with whom Jacob wrestled victoriously 
and whose blessing he obtained by force, was therefore a god 
subdued by a man, very much as in the combats of gods and men 
in the Iliad. But when Diomedes succeeds in wounding Ares, 
it is with the aid of Pallas Athenz, while Jacob disposes of his 
god without the assistance of any other god. 

While the conceptions of God among the Israelites were very 
naive, the civilized nations surrounding them in many cases had 
priestly classes that had advanced as far as monotheism, at least 
in their occult teachings. This condition was at one time em- 
phatically evident among the Egyptians. 

“We are not yet able to present in detail or enumerate chrono- 
logically all the manifold vagaries of speculation, all the phases 
which the history of thought (among the Egyptians) passed 
through. But we are finally brought to the point of recognizing 
that in the occult teaching even Horus and Re, the son and the 
father, are absolutely identical, and that the god begets himself 
by his own mother, the goddess of Heaven, and that she herself 
remains merely a product, a creation, of the single eternal god. 
This doctrine is not expressed clearly and unambiguously, with 
all its consequences, before the beginning of the New Empire 
(after the driving out of the Hyksos, in the Fifteenth Century 
B.c.); but it already begins to take form in the period beginning 
with the end of the sixth dynasty (about the year 2500 B.c.), 
and the ideas lying at the base of it have already been definitely 
fixed in the Middle Empire (about 2000 B.c.). 

“The new doctrine originated in Anu, the City of the Sun 
(Heliopolis) .” 7° 


20 Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des alten Aegypten, pp. 192, 193. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 233 


To be sure, this doctrine remained a secret doctrine, but it had 
at least one practical application. This occurred before the 
Hebrews had entered Canaan, under Amenhotep IV, in the Four- 
teenth Century B.c. It appears that this prince was in conflict 
with the priesthood, whose wealth and power threatened to over- 
shadow him. He knew of no other way of combating them than 
by taking their secret doctrine seriously, ordering that only one 
god be worshiped, and relentlessly persecuting all other gods, 
which amounted in fact to his confiscating the immense wealth 
of the priesthood assigned to the other gods. 

We have no information concerning the details of the struggle 
between priesthood and monarchy. It lasted over a long period, 
but one hundred years after Amenhotep IV, the priesthood was 
completely victorious and had completely reéstablished the wor- 
ship of the old gods. 

This whole story shows to what a point monotheistic views had 
already advanced in the secret priestly doctrines of the civilized 
centers of the ancient Orient. We have no reason to assume that 
the Babylonian priests were more backward than those of Egypt, 
for they seem to be equals in all the arts and sciences. Even 
_ Jeremias speaks of a “latent monotheism” in Babylon. Marduk, 
creator of Heaven and earth, was also the lord of the gods, whom 
he “pastures as sheep,” all the various gods were only special 
appearances of the one and only god. Thus we read in a Baby- 
lonian text concerning the various gods: “Ninib: Marduk of 
Strength. Nergal: Marduk of Battle. Bel: Marduk of Govern- 
ment. Nabu: Marduk of Business. Sin: Marduk illuminating 
the Night. Samas: Marduk of Law. Addu: Marduk of Rain.” 

Precisely at the time of the Exile of the Jews, when a sort of 
monotheism was also arising among the Persians who had come 
into contact with Babylon, we have indications that “in Babylon 
also a beginning was made toward monotheism, which probably 
showed very strong similarities with the Pharaonic sun worship, 
of Amenophis IV (Amenhotep). At least an inscription belong- 
ing to the period shortly before the fall of Babylon represents 
the moon-god as having a role similar to that of the sun-god 


234 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Amenophis IV, which would be fully in accord with the impor- 
tance of moon-worship in Babylonia.” ** 

But while the priestly collegia in Babylonia as well as in Egypt 
had a real interest in withholding their possibly monotheistic 
views from the people, since their entire power and wealth de- 
pended upon the traditional polytheistic worship, the case was 
quite different with the priesthood of the Federal fetish at Jeru- 
salem. 

Even before the destruction of Jerusalem this fetish had in- 
creased in importance, for Samaria had been destroyed and the 
Northern Empire of Israel had gone down with it. Jerusalem was 
now the only large city of Israelitic nationality; the country ter- 
ritory dependent upon it remained relatively unimportant. The 
prestige of the Federal fetish which had been great in Israel, 
particularly in the tribe of Judea, and perhaps since as long ago 
as the time before David, now began to overshadow and outshine 
all the other sacred possessions of the people, as Jerusalem out- 
shone all the other towns in Judea. Likewise the priesthood 
serving this fetish necessarily attained a dominant position over 
the other priests in the country. There arose a struggle between 
the country priests and the priesthood of the capital, which ended 
in the assignment to the fetish at Jerusalem of a monopoly posi- 
tion, perhaps even before the Exile. At least that is what is indi- 
cated in the tale of Deuteronomy, the “‘Book of Doctrine”, which 
a priest maintained he had “found” in the Temple in the year 
621 B.c. It contained the divine command to destroy all places 
of worship outside of Jerusalem, and King Josiah faithfully car- 
ried out this command: ‘‘And he put down the idolatrous priests 
whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high 
places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about 
Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, 
and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of Heaven. 
. . . And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and 
defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from 
Geba to Beer-sheba. . . . Moreover, the altar that was at Beth-el, 
and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made 

21H. Winckler, Die babylonische Geisteskultur. 1907, p. 144. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 235 


Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he 
brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to 
powder, and burned the grove.” ” 

Not only the places in which foreign gods were worshiped, but 
those places sacred to Jehovah himself, including the oldest of his 
altars, were thus desecrated and destroyed. 

But possibly this entire story, like so many others of those in 
the Bible, is only an invention of the post-Exile period, an attempt 
to justify events that took place after the Exile, by representing 
- them as repetitions of earlier events, inventing precedents for 
them, or at least inflating and exaggerating such precedents. At 
any rate, we may assume that even before the Exile jealousies 
between the priests of the capital and those of the provinces 
existed which temporarily may have led to a shutting down of 
holy places that constituted an inconvenient competition. In the 
case of the exiled Jews, the majority of whom came from Jeru- 
salem, it was not difficult to secure the recognition of the monopoly 
rights of the Temple at Jerusalem. Under the influence, on the 
one hand, of Babylonian philosophy, and on the other hand, of 
the national misfortune—and possibly also of the Persian religion 
which was developing in about the same direction as the Jewish 
religion, and, furthermore, coming into contact with it at about 
this time, imparting stimulus to the Jewish religion and possibly 
also receiving such stimulus—the priesthood were encouraged in 
the taking of a new step. The ambition which they had brought 
with them from Jerusalem to place their fetish in a monopoly 
position, began, under the influence of all these conditions, to 
develop a tendency toward an ethical monotheism, in which 
Jehovah would no longer appear merely as the specific ancestral 
god of Israel, but as the sole God of the world, the personification 
of the Good, the incarnation of all morality. 

Later, when the Jews returned to Jerusalem from their Exile, 
their religion had developed and become spiritualized to the extent 
that the crude conceptions and forms of worship of the Jewish 
peasants who had remained behind necessarily appeared as a 
repulsive pagan abomination. Unless this step had been taken 

22 TI Kings xxiii, 5, 8, 15. 


236 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


at an earlier date, it would now have been easy for the priests and 
masters of Jerusalem to secure the final elimination of these com- 
petitive provincial forms of worship, and to establish the mo- 
nopoly of the priesthood of Jerusalem on a permanent basis. 

Such was the beginning of Jewish monotheism. It was ethical 
in its character, as was also the monotheism of Plato’s philosophy. 
But in the case of the Jews the new conception of God did not 
arise as with the Greeks outside of religion, it was not supported 
by a class standing outside of the priesthood. Thus the single 
God did not appear as a new god, standing above and beyond the 
old world of gods, but as a concentration of the ancient group 
of gods into a single most powerful God, who furthermore was 
nearest to the thoughts of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the old 
warlike ancestral and local God Jehovah, who was anything rather 
than ethical. 

This process introduced a number of serious contradictions into 
the Jewish religion. As an ethical God, Jehovah is a God of all 
humanity, for good and evil are conceptions that are understood 
in an absolute manner, valid for all persons equally. And being 
an ethical God, a personification of the moral idea, this single 
God is omnipresent, as morality is considered as equally valid 
everywhere. But religion, in other words, the worship of Jehovah, 
was also the strongest national bond among the Jews of Babylonia; 
and the entire possibility of a restoration of the national inde- 
pendence was indissolubly connected with the restoration of 
Jerusalem. The erection of the Temple at Jerusalem, and its sub- 
sequent maintenance, now became the slogan to which the Jewish 
nation would rally. The priesthood of this Temple had simul- 
taneously become the highest national authority of the Jews, a 
class having every interest in maintaining the monopoly of wor- 
ship for this Temple. Thus the lofty philosophical abstraction of 
a single omnipresent God, who asks only for a pure heart and a 
sinless mode of life, not for sacrifices, remained peculiarly asso- 
ciated with the ancient primitive fetishism, which domiciled God 
in a specific place, the only place where offerings of all sorts could 
be effectively presented for consideration. The Temple at Jeru- 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 237 


salem remained the exclusive home of Jehovah, to which every 
Jew had to turn his thoughts, the goal of his longings. 

Not less peculiar was another contradiction: God had become 
the incarnation of the moral demands that had equal validity for 
all men, and yet he remained the ancestral God of the Jews. It 
was attempted to reconcile this contradiction by declaring God 
to be indeed the God of all men, by making it the duty of all men 
to love and honor him, but also making the Jews the only people 
he had chosen as a manifestation of this love and honor, the only 
people to whom he had revealed his splendor, leaving the pagans 
to remain in blindness. It is precisely during the time of Exile, 
at the lowest point in their humiliation and despair, that this 
peculiar feeling of superiority over the rest of humanity first 
appears among the Jews. Formerly, Israel had been a people not 
unlike other peoples, and Jehovah a god resembling other gods; 
perhaps stronger than the other gods, just as it was natural to 
believe that one’s own nation was stronger than other nations, 
but surely not the only true God, and Israel surely not the sole 
possessor of the truth. 

“The God of Israel was not the All-Powerful, but only the most 
powerful among the gods. He was on the same level with them 
and had to struggle against them; Kamos and Dagon and Hadad 
were fully on a par with him, less powerful but not less genuine 
than he. ‘What your God Kamos has given unto you to conquer,’ 
Jephthah sends this message to the neighboring peoples who are 
violating the boundaries, ‘that belongs unto you, and what our 
God Jehovah has conquered for us, that is ours.’ The dominions 
of the gods are therefore as clearly distinguished as those of the 
peoples, and no god has any rights in lands worshiping another 
god.” 23 

But now this condition changed. The author of Isaiah, begin- 
ning with chapter xl, who wrote at the end of the period of Exile 
or shortly thereafter, has Jehovah proclaim: 

“T am the Lord; that is my name; and my glory will I not give 
to another, neither my praise to graven images. . . . Sing unto 
the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, 


23 Wellhausen, op. cit., p. 32. 


238 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, 
and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities 
thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit: 
let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top 
of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare 
his praise in the islands.” ** 

There is no longer any mention of limiting God’s authority to 
Palestine, or even to the single city of Jerusalem. But the same 
author has Jehovah say: 

“But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, 
the seed of Abraham my friend. Thou whom I have taken from 
the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, 
and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee and 
not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not 
dismayed, for I am thy God. . . . They that war against thee 
shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. . . . The first shall 
say to Zion, Behold, behold them: and I will give to Jerusalem 
one that bringeth good tidings.” *° 

These are peculiar contradictions, but they are contradictions 
due to the actual life of the times, due to the anomalous position 
of the Jews in Babylon, who had been transplanted into a new 
civilization, the immense impressions of which were revolution- 
izing their entire mode of thought, while all the conditions of 
their lives still forced them to maintain their old traditions, since 
this was the only means of retaining their national existence, more 
important to them than to other tribes; for a painful situation 
that had lasted for centuries had developed their national sen- 
sitiveness in a particularly keen and emphatic manner. 

It now became the task of Jewish thinkers to unite the new 
ethics with the ancient fetishism, to reconcile the philosophy and 
wisdom of the immense civilization which centered at Babylon 
and embraced many races, with the narrowness of a little tribe 
of mountaineers that regarded foreigners with disfavor. And it 
was necessary to achieve this reconciliation on the basis of re- 
ligion; in other words, the traditional faith. It was their duty 


24 Isaiah xlii, 8, 10-12. 
25 Isaiah xli, 8-25. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 259 


therefore to prove that the new was not new, but extremely 
ancient, that the truth of these strangers, which seemed irresistible, 
was neither new nor strange, but a genuine Jewish possession, the 
recognition of which by the Jews did not mean an abandonment 
of their nationality in the Babylonian melting pot, but rather a 
strengthening and final solidification of their nationality. 

This task was well calculated to sharpen the wits, to develop 
the art of interpretation and hair-splitting, which from that time 
on was developed to such perfection, particularly among the Jews. 
And this it was that placed its peculiar mark on the historical 
literature of the Jews. 

And now begins a process which has taken place quite fre- 
quently, and which Marx has analyzed in his investigation of the 
views of the natural condition of man as held in the Eighteenth 
Century. Marx speaks of this process as follows: 

“The individual and isolated hunter and fisher who forms the 
starting point with Smith and Ricardo, belongs to the insipid 
illusions of the Eighteenth Century. They are Robinsonades, 
which do not by any means represent, as students of the history 
of civilization imagine, a reaction against over-refinement and a 
return to a misunderstood natural life. They are no more based 
on such a naturalism than is Rousseau’s Contrat Social, which 
makes naturally independent individuals come in contact and 
have intercourse by contract. They are the fiction and only the 
esthetic fiction of the small and great Robinsonades. They are, 
moreover, the anticipation of ‘bourgeois society,’ which had been 
in course of development since the Sixteenth Century and made 
gigantic strides towards maturity in the Eighteenth. In this 
society of free competition the individual appears free from the 
bonds of nature, etc., which in former epochs of history made 
him a part of a definite, limited human conglomeration. To the 
prophets of the Eighteenth Century, on whose shoulders Smith 
and Ricardo are still standing, this Eighteenth Century individual, 
constituting the joint product of the dissolution of the feudal 
form of society and of the new forces of production which had 
developed since the Sixteenth Century, appears as an ideal whose 
existence belongs to the past; not as a result of history, but as its 


240 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


starting point. Since that individual appeared to be in conform- 
ity with nature and corresponded to their conception of human 
nature, he was regarded not as a product of history, but of nature. 
This illusion is characteristic of every new epoch.” *° 

Such was the illusion suffered by the thinkers who developed 
the notions of monotheism and of priestly domination among the 
Jews, during and after the period of Exile. This thought did not 
appear to them to have been produced by an historical develop- 
ment, but as a condition given from the start, not as “an historical 
result”, but as the “initial point of history”. History itself was 
now conceived in a like sense and the more easily adapted to the 
new conditions since it was largely a mere oral tradition and for 
the most part not based on documentary evidence. The faith in 
a single God and the control of Israel by the priests of Jehovah 
was now made the starting point of Israel’s history; polytheism 
and fetishism, which could not be entirely denied, were repre- 
sented as a later deviation from the faith of the fathers, and not 
as this primitive faith itself, which they really were. 

And this conception had the great advantage of possessing an 
uncommonly consoling appeal, as did also the race’s proclaiming 
itself God’s chosen people. The assumption that Jehovah had 
been only the ancestral God of Israel made it necessary to inter- 
pret the defeats of this people as so many defeats of its God, who 
thus turned out to be the weaker in combats with other gods; 
there was therefore every reason to doubt Jehovah and his priests. 
But the case became quite different once there was no other god 
than Jehovah, if Jehovah had chosen the Israelites before all 
other peoples and they had rewarded him with ingratitude and 
defection. All the misfortunes of Israel and Judea now appeared 
as so many righteous punishments for its sins, for its neglect of 
Jehovah's priests, thus becoming evidences not of God’s weakness, 
but of his anger, for he will not be scoffed at in vain. Buta 
natural corollary of this notion was to the effect that God would 
again have mercy on his people, would rescue and redeem it as 
soon as it again was imbued with the proper faith in him and in 


26 Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, printed with ‘A 
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Chicago, 1913, pp. 265-267. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 241 


his priests and prophets. If the national life was not to die out, 
such a faith became the more necessary as the position of the 
little community, the “worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel” (Isaiah 
xli, 14), became more hopeless among hostile communities of su- 
perior power. 

Only a supernatural, superhuman, divine power, a savior, a 
Messiah sent by God, could now save and liberate Judea and 
finally elevate it to be a master over the peoples now maltreating 
it. The faith in the Messiah arises simultaneously with mono- 
theism, and is intimately connected with it. For this very rea- 
son, the Messiah is not imagined as a god, but as a human sent 
by God. For it was his function to erect an earthly kingdom, 
not a kingdom of God, for Jewish thought had not yet reached 
this stage of abstraction, but a kingdom of the Jews. In fact, 
Cyrus, who released the Jews from Babylon and sent them back 
to Jerusalem was already greeted as the anointed of Jehovah, 
Messiah, Christ. (Isaiah xlv, 1.) 

This transformation of Jewish thought, which received its 
strongest stimulus during the Exile, but which surely did not 
achieve its final form in that period, cannot possibly have taken 
place in a single instant or by peaceful means. We cannot afford 
to forget that this transformation was expressing itself in power- 
ful polemics in the style of the prophets, in profound doubts and 
broodings after the fashion of the Book of Job, and finally in his- 
torical presentations in the style of the various components of the 
Five Books of Moses, which were set down at that time. 

Not until long after the Exile did this revolutionary period 
come to anend. Certain definite dogmatical, ecclesiastical, legal 
and historical views came out victorious, and were accepted as 
correct by the priesthood, which had obtained control of the 
people, as well as by the masses of the people themselves. Cer- 
tain writings which were in accord with these views were declared 
to be very ancient and holy and transmitted as such to posterity. 
But it was felt to be necessary to introduce some unity into the 
various ingredients of this literature, which was still full of con- 
tradictions, uniting within itself in a most motley fashion ele- 
ments old and new, rightly understood and not understood at all, 


242 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


genuine and fabricated; this purpose was achieved by means of 
exhaustive “editings”’, cuts and interpolations. In spite of all 
this “editorial work”, we fortunately still have in its result, the 
Old Testament, enough of the original substance to enable us to 
recognize in it at least a trace—among all the profusion of luxuri- 
ant forgeries—of the character of the ancient pre-exile Hebrew 
people, that Hebrew people of whom the modern Jews are not 
only a continuation, but also a perfect opposite. 


b. The Jewish Diaspora 


In the year 538 B.c. the Babylonian Jews were permitted by 
Cyrus to return to Jerusalem, but we have already seen that by 
no means all took advantage of this permission. How could all 
have lived in Jerusalem? The city was devastated and much 
time would be needed for making it habitable, fortifying it, and 
rebuilding the Temple of Jehovah. But even then it would not 
offer all the Jews an opportunity for making their living. Prob- 
ably it was as true then as now that the peasant has a predilection 
for moving cityward, while the transition from urban to agri- 
cultural life is as difficult as it is rare. 

The Jews probably had hardly acquired any industrial skill in 
Babylon; possibly they had lived there too short a time. Judea 
did not attain any national independence, remained dependent 
on foreign conquerors, first on the Persians, then, beginning with 
Alexander the Great, on the Greeks, and finally, after a short in- 
terregnum of independence and of very varied and destructive 
revolutions, it came under the control of the Romans. All the 
conditions were as a rule lacking for the existence of a warlike 
monarchy, acquiring wealth by subjecting and plundering weaker 
neighbors. : 

While agriculture, industry, military service, did not offer very 
large fields for the Jews after the Exile, the majority of them 
had no other means of livelihood than trade, which had already 
been the case in Babylon. They embraced this opportunity the 
more readily since they had been in possession of the necessary 
mental qualifications and equipment for centuries. 

But it was just in this period beginning with the Babylonian 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 243 


captivity that great changes were taking place in politics and 
trade which had disastrous effects on the commercial status of 
Palestine. Peasant agriculture and also handicraft are extremely 
conservative occupations. Progress rarely takes place in them, 
progress rarely even interests them, while the goad of competition 
is lacking—always the case in primitive conditions—and while 
the normal course of events, when there are no crop failures, 
pestilences, wars and similar mass misfortunes, afford every 
workingman who operates in the traditional manner, his daily 
bread, while that which is new and untried may be the occasion 
for failures and losses. 

Technical advances in peasant agriculture and in handicraft 
therefore usually do not arise directly from these sources, but 
from trade, which brings new products and new processes from 
abroad, which gives cause for thought and finally produces new 
profitable cultivations and new methods. 

Trade is far less conservative, being freed from the start from 
local and professional limitations, and being by nature critical 
of home traditions, because it is capable of comparing them and 
measuring them by the standard of what has been attained in 
other places and under other conditions. Furthermore, the mer- 
chant succumbs to the pressure of competition more readily than 
does the farmer or the artisan, for he meets competitors of the 
most various nations in the great centers of trade. He is there- 
fore forced to be always on the lookout for something new, par- 
ticularly to work for an improvement in the means of traffic, and 
for an extension of the circle of his commercial relations. As 
long as agriculture and industry are not conducted with the use 
of capital and not built up on a scientific basis, trade is the only 
revolutionary element in economy; maritime commerce has a 
particularly powerful effect in this direction. Maritime naviga- 
tion makes it possible to cover greater distances and to secure 
contact between more varied peoples than is the case with trade 
by land. For the ocean at first keeps the races further apart 
than does the land, thus making the evolution of each people more 
independent of the others and more peculiar. But with the de- 
velopment of maritime navigation, bringing about contact between 


244 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


peoples hitherto separated, there is frequently a meeting between 
more divergent extremes than are brought together in trade by 
land. But navigation also makes higher demands in the form of 
technical skill; maritime commerce develops much later than 
land trade, for a much more thorough control of nature is pre- 
supposed in the construction of a seaworthy ship than in the 
process of taming a camel or an ass. On the other hand, it is 
precisely the great profits of sea-trade, which are attainable only 
on the basis of a high degree of ability in shipbuilding, which 
constitute one of the most powerful impulses to develop this 
ability. The technical skill of ancient times probably did not 
develop so far, or achieve such triumphs in any other field, as in 
the field of ship construction. 

Sea-trade does not serve as an impediment to land-trade; on 
the contrary, it encourages trade by land. The prosperity of a 
seaport town usually requires the presence of a hinterland furnish- 
ing the commodities to be loaded on ships in the seaport, and 
which purchases the commodities brought to port by the ships. 
The seaport must seek to develop its trade by land together with 
its trade by sea, but the latter continues to gain in importance 
more and more, it becomes the decisive factor, while the former 
remains dependent on it. If the routes of sea-trade change, those 
of the trade by land must also change. Pheenicia, lying between 
the old centers of civilization on the Nile and the Euphrates, and 
participating in their commerce, furnished the first navigators 
who made great voyages in the Mediterranean. This country 
had as good an access to the Mediterranean as did the land of 
the Egyptians. But the latter invited its population chiefly to 
agriculture, the production of which, owing to the inundations 
of the Nile, was inexhaustible, not to navigation. Egypt lacked 
the necessary wood for the construction of ships, but it also lacked 
the stimulus of necessity which is the only impulse that can tempt 
man at an early stage to expose himself to the dangers of the open 
sea. Great as was the development of river navigation among 
the Egyptians, their ocean navigation remained a coastwise navi- 
gation with short courses. They developed agriculture and in- 
dustry, particularly weaving, and their commercial traffic pros- 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 245 


pered. But they did not travel abroad as traders; they waited 
for foreigners to bring their wares to them. The desert and the 
sea remained hostile elements in their eyes. 

The Pheenicians, on the other hand, lived in a strip of land 
along the coast, which literally forced them into the sea, as this 
strip lay along the foot of a rocky chain of mountains which 
afforded but slight opportunities for agriculture, thus making it 
necessary to supplement its insufficient yield by catches of fish, 
and which also furnished excellent wood for shipbuilding. These 
were the conditions that forced the Phoenicians to take to the 
sea. And the fact that they were placed between regions with 
very highly developed industries later stimulated them to expand 
their fishing expeditions into expeditions for commercial opera- 
tions by sea. They thus became the bearers of Indian, Arabian, 
Babylonian and Egyptian products, particularly textile goods and 
Spices, to the West, whence they brought in return products of 
another kind, particularly metals. 

But in the course of time they encountered serious competitors 
in the Greeks, the inhabitants of island and coast regions whose 
farm lands were almost as niggardly as those of Pheenicia, with 
the result that the Greeks also were forced to undertake fisheries 
and navigation. ‘These grew to larger and larger proportions and 
became more and more dangerous to the Pheenicians. At first 
the Greeks sought to avoid the Phoenicians and to obtain new 
routes to the Orient. They penetrated into the Black Sea, from 
whose seaports they established a trade with India by way of 
Central Asia. Simultaneously they attempted to establish rela- 
tions with Egypt and to open up that country to their maritime 
commerce. Just before the period of the Babylonian captivity 
of the Jews, the Ionians and Karians succeeded in this attempt. 
Beginning with the time of Psammetikh (663 B.c.) they had a 
firm foothold in Egypt, almost inundating it with their merchants. 
Under Amasis (569-525 B.c.) they were already given a ter- 
ritory along the western arm of the Nile, on which to establish 
their own seaport after their own fashion, which was to be called 
Naukratis. This was to serve as the sole center for the trade with 


246 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Greece. Soon thereafter Egypt succumbed to the Persians (525 
B.c.), aS Babylonia had succumbed before. But the position of 
the Greeks in Egypt was not altered by this circumstance. On 
the other hand, foreigners were now given full rights to trade 
with all Egypt; and the Greeks profited most by this arrangement. 
As soon as the Persian régime weakened, the warlike spirit of the 
former nomadic people becoming enervated owing to life in the 
large cities, the Egyptians rose in rebellion and attempted to 
regain their independence, in which attempt they were for a time 
successful (404-342 B.c.). This also could not have been done 
without the assistance of the Greeks, who had meanwhile become 
strong enough to force back the mighty Persians on land and 
sea, and not only the Persians, but also their subjects, the Phceni- 
cians. Under Alexander of Macedonia the Greek community 
begins, in 334 B.c., to take the offensive against the Persian Em- 
pire, annexes it, and puts an end to the glory of the Phcenician 
cities, which had long been declining. 

The trade of Palestine had gone down more rapidly than that 
of Phceenicia, and world traffic had deserted the routes of Palestine, 
not only the exports of India, but also those of Babylonia, Arabia, 
Ethiopia and Egypt. Palestine, being the buffer between Egypt 
and Syria, remained the theater on which the wars between the 
lords of Syria and those of Egypt were most likely to be fought, 
but the ¢vade between these two regions now went by sea, to the 
neglect of the land route. Palestine simply retained all the dis- 
advantages of its intermediate position, losing all the advantages. 
While the majority of the Jews were more and more forced into 
trade as an occupation, the possibility of their practicing trade 
in their own country was progressively decreasing. Since trade, 
therefore, did not come to them, they were forced to seek it 
abroad by trading with such nations as had not developed a com- 
mercial class of their own, but waited for merchants to come to 
them. ‘There were quite a number of such races. Where agri- 
culture supported the majority of the population, where it was 
not necessary to supplement it by means of nomadic cattle-breed- 
ing or fisheries, and where the aristocracy satisfied its desire for 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 247 


expansion by accumulating latifundia at home and waging war 
abroad, it was generally preferred to wait for traders to come 
to the country instead of setting out to secure foreign commodi- 
ties abroad. This had been the practice of the Egyptians, and 
was to be the practice of Rome. In both cases the traders were 
foreigners, particularly Greeks and Jews. The greatest pros- 
perity encountered by such traders was in countries of the above 
mentioned type. 

The Diaspora, the dispersal of the Jews outside of their home, 
therefore begins just in the time following the Babylonian Exile; 
in other words, in the time when the Jews had been permitted to 
return to their own home. This dispersal was not the conse- 
quence of an act of violence, like the destruction of Jerusalem, but 
of an imperceptible transformation then in process, namely, the 
shifting of the routes of commerce. And as the routes of world 
trade have never again favored Palestine since then, that coun- 
try is avoided even now by the majority of the Jews, even when 
an opportunity to settle in the land of their fathers is offered them. 
Zionism will alter nothing in this condition unless it possesses the 
power of shifting the center of world trade to Palestine. 

The greatest gathering of Jews took place in cities where there 
was most commercial activity and the greatest accumulations of 
riches, namely in Alexandria and later in Rome. The Jews in- 
creased in these places, not only in numbers, but also in wealth 
and power. Their powerful national feeling also cemented them 
strongly together, which was a factor of all the greater impor- 
tance since in the days of the general and increasing social disin- 
tegration which was characteristic of the centuries immediately 
preceding Christ, the social bonds were universally dissolving and 
disappearing. And as it was possible to find Jews in all the com- 
mercial centers of the entire world of Hellenic and Roman civiliza- 
tion as it existed at that time, the bonds of their kinship extended 
throughout this area, constituting an International which gave 
assistance to each of its members, no matter what country he 
came from. If we consider in addition the commercial abilities 
which they had acquired in the course of many centuries, and 
which since their exile they had been developing under pressure 


248 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


in a single direction, we shall understand this increase in their 
power and wealth. 

Mommsen says of Alexandria that it “was almost as much a 
city of the Jews as of the Greeks; the Alexandrian Jews must have 
been at least equal to those of Jerusalem in number, wealth, in- 
telligence, and organization. In the First Imperial Era it was 
estimated that there were a million Jews to eight million Egyp- 
tians, and their influence was probably greater than would be rep- 
resented by this ratio. . . . They, and they only, were permitted 
to form a community within the community as it were, and while 
other non-burgesses were ruled by the authorities of the burgess- 
body, they were permitted to a certain extent to govern them- 
selves. 

“<The Jews,’ says Strabo, ‘have a national head (2é8vapxnc) 
of their own in Alexandria who presides over the people and de- 
cides processes and disposes of contracts and arrangements as if 
he were ruling an independent community.’ This was done be- 
cause the Jews declared that such specific jurisdiction was a re- 
quirement of their nationality, or, what is equivalent to the same 
thing, their religion. Further, the usual national regulations 
paid attention to an extensive degree to the national and religious 
scruples of the Jews, and wherever possible granted the necessary 
exemptions. The fact that they lived together strengthened this 
peculiar position; for example, in Alexandria, of the five quar- 
ters of the city, two were inhabited chiefly by Jews.” 7 

Some of the Jews of Alexandria became not only wealthy but 
also attained high repute and influence among the rulers of the 
world. 

For instance, the Supreme Customs Lessee on the Arabian 
side of the Nile, the Alabarch Alexander, had an enormous influ- 
ence. Agrippa, who later became King of Judea, borrowed two 
hundred thousand drachmas from him under the reign of Ti- 
berius. Alexander gave him five talents in cash and an order 
for the payment of the balance in Dikzarchia.”* This shows how 

27 Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, London, 1886, vol. ii, 


pp. 163-165. 
28 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, xviii, 6, 3. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 249 


close were the commercial relations between the Jews of Alex- 
andria and those in Italy. There was an important Jewish com- 
munity in Dikearchia, or Puteoli, near Naples. Josephus further 
reports concerning the same Alexandrian Jew: “He, Emperor 
Claudius, again liberated the Alabarch Alexander Lysimachus, his 
good old friend, who had been a trustee for his mother Antonia 
and had been imprisoned by Caius in a fit of rage. Alexander’s 
son Marcus later married Berenice, daughter of King Agrippa.” 

What was true of Alexandria is also true of Antioch: ‘The 
Jews were granted a certain independence as a community, and 
a privileged position, not only in the capital of Egypt, but also in 
that of Syria, and the position occupied by these two cities as 
centers of the Jewish Diaspora has not been the least of the 
elements contributing to their development.” *° 

We can trace back the presence of Jews in Rome to the Sec- 
ond Century s.c. In 139 B.c. the Roman Pretor for Foreign- 
ers exiled Jews who had admitted Italic proselytes to the cele- 
bration of their Sabbath. Perhaps these Jews were members of 
an embassy sent out by Simon Maccabeus to gain the favor of the 
Romans, and who were making use of this opportunity to carry 
on propaganda for their religion. Soon thereafter we find Jews 
domiciled in Rome, and the Jewish community there became quite 
strong when Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.c. He 
brought a large number of Jewish prisoners of war to Rome, who 
continued living there as slaves or freedmen. This community 
became very influential. About the year 60 Cicero complained 
that their power was being felt even on the Forum. This power 
continued to increase under Caesar, and is described by Mommsen 
in the following words: 

“How numerous even in Rome the Jewish population was 
already before Caesar’s time, and how closely at the same time 
the Jews even then kept together as fellow-countrymen, is shown 
by the remark of an author of this period, that it was dangerous 
for a governor to offend the Jews of his province, because he 


29 Antiquities, xix, 5, I. 
80 Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, London, 1886, vol. ii, 
p. 127. 


250 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


might then certainly reckon on being hissed after his return by the 
populace of the capital. Even at this time the predominant busi- 
ness of the Jews was trade; the Jewish trader moved everywhere 
with the conquering Roman merchant then, in the same way as he 
afterwards accompanied the Genoese and the Venetian, and 
capital flowed in on all hands to the Jewish, by the side of the 
Roman, merchants. At this period, too, we encounter the peculiar 
antipathy of the Occidentals towards this so thoroughly Oriental 
race and their foreign opinions and customs. This Judaism, 
although not the most pleasing feature in the nowhere pleasing 
picture of the mixture of nations which then prevailed, was never- 
theless a historical element developing itself in the natural course 
of things, which the statesman could neither ignore nor combat, 
and which Caesar on the contrary, just like his predecessor Alex- ' 
ander, with correct discernment of the circumstances, fostered as 
far as possible. While Alexander, by laying the foundation of 
Alexandrian Judaism, did not much less for the nation than its 
own David by planning the Temple of Jerusalem, Caesar also ad- 
vanced the interests of the Jews in Alexandria and in Rome by 
special favors and privileges, and protected in particular their 
peculiar worship against the Roman as well as against the Greek 
local priests. ‘The two great men of course did not contemplate 
placing the Jewish nationality on an equal footing with the 
Hellenic or Italo-Hellenic. But the Jew who has not like the 
Occidental received the Pandora’s gift of political organization, 
and stands substantially in a relation of indifference to the state; 
who, moreover, is as reluctant to give up the essence of his na- 
tional idiosyncrasy, as he is ready to clothe it with any nationality 
at pleasure and to adapt himself up to a certain degree to foreign 
habits—the Jew was for this very reason as it were made for a 
state, which was to be built on the ruins of a hundred living 
polities and to be endowed with a somewhat abstract and, from 
the outset, toned-down nationality. Even in the ancient world 
Judaism was an effective leaven of cosmopolitanism and of na- 
tional decomposition, and to that extent a specially privileged 
member in the Caesarian state, the polity of which was strictly 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 251 


speaking nothing but a citizenship of the world, and the nation- 
ality of which was at bottom nothing but humanity.” ** 

Mommsen here succeeds in giving shelter within a single sen- 
tence to three distinct varieties of professorial historical wisdom. 
In the first place, there is the conception that the monarchs make 
history, that a few decrees of Alexander the Great created the 
Jews in Alexandria, not the alteration of the commercial routes 
which had already brought a large Jewish colony to Egypt and 
continued to develop and strengthen it after Alexander’s death. 
Or shall we believe that the entire world trade of Egypt, which 
lasted for many centuries, was created by the Macedonian con- 
queror, as the result of a momentary whim during his temporary 
stay in that country? 

This superstitious respect for royal decrees is immediately fol- 
lowed by the superstition of race. The races of the West are 
equipped by nature with the “Pandora’s gift” of political or- 
ganization, which is lacking to the Jews from birth. Nature ap- 
parently is represented as creating political inclinations from its 
own resources, before any such thing as politics exists, and then 
distributing them capriciously among the various “races”, what- 
ever that may mean. This mystical caprice of nature is here all 
the more comic in its effect when we recall that the Jews up to 
the time of their exile possessed and applied just as large a pro- 
portion of the ‘‘Pandora’s gift” of political organization as did all 
the other races at their stage in civilization. Only the pressure 
of external circumstances deprived them of a State and thus of 
the material necessary for political organization. 

In addition to these monarchic and anthropological conceptions 
of history, Mommsen provides us with a third conception, which 
represents the generals and organizers of states as influenced by 
mental processes similar to those hatched by German professors 
in their studies. The unscrupulous embezzler and soldier of for- 
tune, Julius Caesar, is represented as desiring to create an abstract 
nationality of world citizenship and humanity, and as having 
recognized and therefore favored the Jews as the most useful 
means for attaining this end! 

81 Mommsen, History of Rome, New York, 1895, vol. v, pp. 418, 419. 


Zoe FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Even if Caesar had pretended to be acting in this spirit, one 
should not feel entirely obliged to consider such an expression 
as in accord with his real thoughts; we are just as unwilling to 
take seriously the phrases of Napoleon III. The liberal pro- 
fessors of the period in which Mommsen’s History of Rome was 
written would permit themselves to be easily deceived by Napo- 
leonic turns of phrase, but this tendency did not constitute a 
political virtue. But Caesar never even said a word to suggest 
any such idea. The Caesars never used any phrases except those 
that were current at the time, that could be used for demagogic 
purposes, among gullible proletarians or gullible professors. The 
fact that Caesar not only tolerated the Jews but also favored 
them could be explained more simply, though not quite so mag- 
nificently, by his eternal debts and his eternal lust for money. 
Money had become the decisive power in the State. Because 
the Jews had money and had become useful to him, and not be- 
cause their national characteristics might be of value in the crea- 
tion of an “abstract, prepared nationality” Caesar protected them 
and allowed them privileges. 

The Jews were appreciative of this favor; they deeply mourned 
his death. 

“Tn the great public mourning he was also lamented by the for- 
eign inhabitants (of Rome), by each nation according to its 
fashion, particularly the Jews, who went so far as to visit the mor- 
tuary chamber several nights in succession.” *? 

Augustus also appreciated the importance of the Jews. 

“The communities of Asia Minor under Augustus made the 
attempt to draw upon their Jewish fellow-citizens uniformly in 
the levy, and no longer to allow them the observance of the Sab- 
bath; but Agrippa decided against them and maintained the 
status quo in favor of the Jews, or rather, perhaps, now for the 
first time legalized the exemption of the Jews from military serv- 
ice and their Sabbath privilege, that had been previously conceded 
according to circumstances only by individual governors or com- 
munities of the Greek provinces. Augustus further directed the 
governors of Asia not to apply the rigorous imperial laws respect- 


82 Suetonius, Julius Caesar, chap. Ixxxiv. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 253 


ing unions and assemblies against the Jews. ... Augustus 
showed himself favorably inclined to the Jewish colony in the 
suburb of Rome on the other side of the Tiber, and permitted 
those who had neglected to collect his largesses because of the 
Sabbath, to receive their quota subsequently.” * 

The Jews in Rome must have been very numerous at that time. 
More than eight thousand (only men?) of their congregation took 
part in a Jewish delegation to Augustus in the year 3 B.c.!_ Very 
recently, numerous Jewish burial places have again been discov- 
ered in Rome. 

Furthermore, while trade was their chief occupation, not all 
the Jews living abroad were traders. Where many lived to- 
gether, they also employed Jewish artisans; Jewish physicians 
are mentioned in inscriptions at Ephesus and Venosa.** Josephus 
even tells us of a Jewish court actor at Rome: “In Dikzarchia, 
or Puteoli, as the Italians call it, I made the acquaintance of the 
actor (uimodeyoc) Aliturus, who was of Jewish descent and a 
great favorite with Nero. I became acquainted through him with 
the Empress Poppza.” *° 


c. The Jewish Propaganda 


Up to their exile, the people of Israel had not multiplied at 
an unusual rate, not more than other races. But from that time 
on it increased to a remarkable extent. The promise of Jehovah, 
alleged to have been already given to Abraham, now was ful- 
filled: “that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will 
multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which 
is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his 
enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
blessed.” *° 

This promise, like practically all the other promises of the 
Bible, was not fabricated until the condition prophesied in it had 
already been realized—like the prophecies to which certain di- 
vinely favored heroes give utterance in modern historical dramas. 


83 Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, 1886, vol. ii, pp. 171-172. 
84 Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, vol. iii, p. 90. 

85 Josephus, Autobiography. 

86 Genesis xxii, 17, 18. 


254 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Jehovah’s promise to Abraham could not have been written until 
after the Exile, for the statement had no meaning before that 
period; but then it was beautifully appropriate. The Jews in- 
deed did increase in numbers, establishing themselves in all the 
important cities of the Mediterranean world, “possessing the gates 
of their enemies’’, everywhere stimulating their trade and “bless- 
ing all the nations of the earth”. 

The geographer Strabo, who wrote about the time of the birth 
of Christ, says of the Jews: “This race has already come into 
every city and it is difficult to find a single spot of the inhabited 
earth which has not received this nation and is not ruled (finan- 
cially) by it.” 

This rapid increase in the Jewish population should probably 
be attributed in part to their great fruitfulness. But even this 
fruitfulness may not be taken as a special racial trait—in that case 
it would have attracted attention from the earliest times—but 
rather a special trait of the class now chiefly represented by the 
Jews, the trading class. 

Not only every form of society, but each class within the given 
society has its special law of population. The modern wage pro- 
letariat, for example, increases rapidly, by reason of the fact that 
the proletarians, female as well as male, become economically in- 
dependent at an early age and have an opportunity to secure jobs 
for their children while still young; furthermore, the proletarian 
has no possessions to be divided, which might tempt him to limit 
the number of his children. 

The law governing the increase in the population of settled 
farmers is variable. Wherever they find free soil, as is always the 
case when they are invading new country, hitherto occupied by 
hunters or shepherds, they multiply with great rapidity, for the 
conditions of their existence are much more favorable for the 
bringing up of their children than are, for example, the conditions 
of nomadic hunters with uncertain sources of food and the lack 
of all nourishment in the form of milk aside from mother’s milk, a 
condition which forces the mothers to nurse their children for a 
number of years. The farmer produces an abundance of nour- 
ishment at regular intervals and the cattle raised by him also 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 255 


produce milk in plenty, more than the cattle of the nomad shep- 
herds, which use up much of their strength in the search for 
pasture. 

But the available land for agriculture is limited, and the limita- 
tions imposed by private property may become greater than those 
imposed by nature. And besides, the technical development of 
agriculture is for the most part very slow. Sooner or later there- 
fore a nation of farmers will reach a point at which it no longer 
finds any new soil for the establishment of new homes and fami- 
lies. This forces the peasant, unless his excess posterity can be 
accommodated in another calling, for instance, military service 
or urban industry, to impose artificial limits upon the number of 
his children. Peasants faced by this situation are the ideals 
of the Malthusians. 

But mere private property in land may have the same effect, 
even when not all the arable land has been tilled. The possession 
of land is now a source of power; the more land one owns, the 
more power and wealth one has in society. It now becomes the 
desire of landed proprietors to increase their possessions in land, 
_and as the area of the country is fixed and not capable of ex- 
pansion, real property can only be increased by combining already 
existing parcels. Inheritance laws may encourage or retard this 
process; they may encourage it by marriage, if both parties in- 
herit land, which is then thrown together; they may retard it 
whenever a piece of land must be divided among several heirs. 
Therefore a point will be reached by the great landed proprietor, 
as well as by the peasant proprietor, at which he either will limit 
the number of his children, in order to maintain his property 
as large as possible, or disinherit all the children but one. Wher- 
ever the division of inheritance among all the children remains 
the rule, private property in land will sooner or later lead to a 
limitation of the number of children of land-owners, and under 
certain circumstances to a considerable decrease in this number. 
This is one of the reasons why the Roman Empire decreased in 
population, for the Empire was based essentially on agriculture. 

In strong contrast with this was the fertility of the Jewish 
families. The Jews had just ceased to be a people chiefly en- 


256 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


gaged in agriculture. The great majority of them were traders 
and capitalists. But capital differs from land in that it may be 
increased. When trade is flourishing it may increase more rap- 
idly than the posterity of the traders; the latter may therefore be 
increasing quite rapidly, while the wealth of each is still increas- 
ing. But it was just in the centuries beginning with the Exile 
and extending into the early portion of the Imperial Era that a 
notable increase in trade took place. The exploitation of the 
workers engaged in agriculture—slaves, tenants, peasants—rap- 
idly increased, while the area of this exploitation was extending. 
The exploitation of the mines continued to increase until the sup- 
ply of slaves ran low. This finally led, as we have seen, to the 
decline of agriculture, to a depopulation of the provinces, and in 
the long run to a weakening of the military power, involving also 
a cessation of the supply of slaves, which was based on continu- 
ous successful wars, and therefore again to a decline in mining. 
But it was a long time before these consequences made them- 
selves felt, the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, and the 
luxury of the rich increasing, while the population as a whole be- 
came impoverished. But trade then was chiefly a trade in luxu- 
ries. Transportation methods were as yet but little developed; 
cheap consignments of great bulk were only beginning to be 
possible. The trade which carried grain from Egypt to Italy 
achieved some importance, but in general, articles of luxury re- 
mained the chief object of trade. While modern trade is con- 
cerned chiefly with the production and consumption of great 
masses, it was formerly concerned rather with the arrogance and 
extravagance of a small rrumber of exploiters. While trade today 
depends on the increase of the consumption of the masses, it 
formerly depended on an increase in exploitation and wasteful- 
ness. It never found more favorable conditions for the latter 
than in the period beginning with the foundation of the Persian 
Empire and ending with the time of the first Caesars. While the 
shifting commercial routes imposed great hardship on Palestine, 
it immensely stimulated trade in general from the Euphrates and 
the Nile, to the Danube and the Rhine, from India to Britain. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 257 


Nations whose economic basis was that of agriculture might go 
down and lose in population; but a nation of merchants neces- 
sarily flourished and had no occasion to impose the slightest limit 
upon its natural increase in population. Nor was there any ex- 
ternal pressure serving to keep down this increase. 

But no matter how high may be our estimate of the natural 
fruitfulness of the Jewish people, this fruitfulness alone would not 
be a sufficient explanation of their rapid increase. This factor 
was greatly enhanced by the strength of the propaganda of 
Judaism. 

The spectacle of a nation increasing its numbers by means of 
religious propaganda is as extraordinary as is the historical situa- 
tion of the Jews itself. 

Like other nations, the Israelites were kept together at first 
by ties of blood. Under the kings, the gentile constitution re- 
placed the territorial organization, the state and its districts. 
This tie ceased to be effective when the Jews were dragged into 
exile; the return to Jerusalem restored this tie only for a small 
fraction of the nation. The greater and ever increasing section 
of the nation was living outside of the Jewish national state, 
abroad, not only temporarily as do the merchants of other na- 
tions, but permanently. But this led to the loss of an additional 
bond of nationality, namely, the common language. ‘The Jews 
living abroad had to speak the foreign tongue, and if several gen- 
erations had already been living abroad, the younger generations 
finally would be able to speak only the language of their native 
country, forgetting their mother tongue. Greek particularly be- 
came very popular among them. Already in the Third Cen- 
tury B.c., the sacred writings of the Jews were translated into 
Greek, probably for the reason that but few of the Alexandrian 
Jews still understood Hebrew, and possibly also for purposes of 
_ propaganda among the Greeks. Greek became the language of 
the new Jewish literature, and even the language of the Jewish 
people living in Italy. ‘The different (Jewish) communities in 
Rome had burial grounds in common, five of which are known. 
The inscriptions are mainly in Greek, some written in an almost 


258 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


unintelligible jargon; some are in Latin, none in Hebrew.” *” 
The Jews were not able to maintain the use of Hebrew even in 
Palestine, where they adopted the language of the population sur- 
rounding them, which was Aramaic. 

Several centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem by the 
Romans, Hebrew already ceased to be a living tongue. It no 
longer served as a means of communication between the members 
of the nation, but only as a means of access to the sacred writings 
of antiquity, which were not really so many centuries or so many 
thousands of years old as they were alleged to be, having been 
recently pieced together from old remnants and new fabrications. 

Their religion, alleged to have been revealed to the primitive 
fathers of Israel, but actually constructed during and after the 
period of exile, became, with their commercial activity, the strong- 
est bond among the Jews, the only trait distinguishing them from 
other nations. 

But the single God of this religion was no longer one of many 
ancestral gods as he had once been; he was now the sole God of 
the world, a God of all men, whose commandments applied to all 
men. The Jews differed from all the others merely by the fact 
that they had recognized him while the others in their blindness 
had failed to do so. The recognition of this God was now the 
mark of Judaism: he who recognized him and his commandments 
was among God’s chosen, was a Jew. Monotheism therefore 
created the logical possibility of extending the limits of Judaism 
by propagating this idea. This possibility would perhaps not 
have been utilized if it had not coincided with the tendency to ex- 
pansion on the part of the Jews. Their small numbers had 
brought the deepest humiliation upon them; yet they had not been 
destroyed. They had survived the worst tribulations, had again 
found a firm foothold, and were beginning to attain power and 
wealth among the most varied surroundings. This circumstance 
inspired them with the proud confidence that they were really - 
the chosen people, really destined to rule the other nations. But 
great as was their faith in their God and in the Messiah whom 


87 Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. iii, 
p. 178. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 259 


their God would send, they nevertheless could not fail to recog- 
nize how hopeless was their situation as long as they remained so 
tiny a nation among the millions of pagans whose overwhelming 
superiority in numbers necessarily became the more evident to 
them as the circle of their commercial relations broadened. The 
stronger their desire for elevation and strength, the more dili- 
gently were they obliged to increase the number of their people, 
to find adherents among the foreign nations. We therefore find 
among the Jews in the centuries immediately preceding the de- 
struction of Jerusalem a powerful tendency to expansion. 

In the case of the inhabitants of the Jewish state, the simplest 
way of realizing this expansion was by means of conversion by 
force. It was not an unusual thing to conquer a people; when- 
ever the Jews succeeded. in this they attempted to force their 
religion upon it. This was done in the age of the Maccabees and 
their successors, extending approximately from 165 to 63 B.c., 
when the downfall of the Syrian Empire afforded the Jewish 
people a certain elbow-room for a time, which they utilized not 
only to shake off the Syrian yoke, but also to expand their own 
territory. Galilee, which had not been Jewish before, was con- 
quered at this period, as Schiirer has shown.** Idumea and the 
land to the east of the Jordan were subjected, and a foothold was 
even gained on the coast, in Jaffa. Such a policy of conquest was 
not unusual; but it was quite unusual for such a policy to develop 
into one of religious expansion. The inhabitants of the newly 
conquered regions had to accept as their own the God who was 
worshiped in the Temple at Jerusalem, had to make pilgrimages 
to Jerusalem to worship him, had to pay temple taxes to Jeru- 
salem, had to become distinct from other nations by the practice 
of circumcision and the observance of the peculiar Jewish ritual 
laws. 

Such a procedure was absolutely unknown in the ancient 
world, in which the conqueror usually allowed full religious and 
moral freedom to the conquered and demanded from the latter 
only his tribute in wealth and blood. 

This form of Jewish expansion was possible only for a time, 


38 Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, vol. ii, p. 5. 


260 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


however, while the power of the Syrians was too slight, and 
that of the Romans not yet close enough to menace the military 
progress of Judea. Even before Pompey had occupied Jerusalem 
(63 B.c.) the advance of the Jews in Palestine had already come 
to a standstill. The expansion of the Jewish religious com- 
munity by means of force was then effectively stopped by the 
superior power of the Romans. 

From this time on the Jews resorted with all the more energy 
to the other method of increasing the numbers of their beliey- 
ers, that of peaceful propaganda. ‘The latter was also an excep- 
tional phenomenon in its day. Earlier than Christianity, Juda- 
ism developed the same degree of proselytizing zeal as the former, 
and met with considerable success. It was quite natural, although 
of course not very logical, that the Christians should censure the 
Jews for this zeal which they themselves were developing in such 
active proportions for their own religion: 

“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ The 
Gospel lays these words in the mouth of Jesus, ‘“‘for ye compass 
sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made ye make 
him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves”. (Matthew 
Xxili, 15.) 

Such were the Christian tones in which the zeal of competition 
expressed itself. 

Material interest alone must have led a number of adherents 
from “pagan” surroundings to the Jews. To be members of so 
widely ramified and prosperous a commercial organization was a 
prospect that must have been enticing to not a few. No matter 
where a Jew came, he could count on energetic support and en- 
couragement at the hands of his fellow-believers. 

Other causes also contributed to the strength of the Jews in 
propaganda. We have seen above how a certain favorable atti- 
tude toward ethical monotheism is bred by a certain stage in the 
development of town life. But the monotheism of the philoso- 
phers was in opposition to the traditional religion, or at least out- 
side its sphere. This monotheism demanded independence of 
thought. But the same social development that favored the 
monotheistic idea also led, as we have seen, to a disintegration of 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 261 


state and society, to an increasing isolation of the individual, to 
a rising need for a firm authority; in the attitude towards life, it 
therefore led not to philosophy, which makes the individual de- 
pendent on himself, but to religion, which approaches the indi- 
vidual as a finished and fixed product of some superhuman au- 
thority. 

Only two of the nations of ancient civilization, the Persians 
and the Jews, owing to special conditions, had come to mono- 
theism not as a philosophy but as a religion. The religions of 
both made considerable advances among the nations of the 
Hellenic world and later of the Roman Empire. But owing to 
their sad position as a people, the Jews were moved to a great zeal 
in proselytizing, and in Alexandria they came into close contact 
with Greek philosophy. 

The Jews were thus enabled to offer the most acceptable 
pabulum to the minds of the declining ancient world, which 
doubted their own traditional gods, but did not have sufficient 
energy to create a view of life without a god or with one god only, 
the more since the Jews combined with their belief in a single 
primitive ethical force also a belief in the coming of the Re- 
deemer for whom the entire world was then longing. 

Among the many religions that met in the Roman Empire, the 
Jewish religion was that which best answered the thought and 
the wants of the epoch; it was superior not to the philosophy of 
the “pagans’’, but to their religions—it is hardly to be wondered 
at that the Jews felt proudly superior to the latter, and that the 
number of their adherents should grow rapidly. “All men,” said 
the Alexandrian Jew Philo, “are being conquered by Judaism and 
admonished to virtue; barbarians, Hellenes, dwellers on conti- 
nents and islands, the nations of the East and of the West, Euro- 
peans, Asiatics, the races of the earth.” He expected that Juda- 
ism would become the religion of the world; and this was in the 
time of Christ.*° 

We have already pointed out that as early as 139 B.c. Jews 
were deported from Rome because they had made proselytes in 
Italy. It is reported from Antioch that the majority of the 


88 Compare the Book of Tobit, xiv, 6, 7. 


262 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Jewish congregation in that town consisted of converted Jews, 
not of Jews by birth. Conditions must have been similar in 
many other places. This fact alone shows the absurdity of the 
effort to explain the traits of the Jews on the basis of their 
race. 

Even kings became converted to Judaism: Izates, king of the 
district of Adiabene in Assyria, was induced to embrace Judaism 
by several women who had been converted to that faith, which 
had been taken also by his mother Helena. Zeal caused him to 
go so far as to be circumcised, although even his Jewish teacher 
had counseled against this, as unnecessarily endangering his 
status. The king’s brothers also became Jews; this was in the 
time of Tiberius and Claudius. 

Beautiful Jewesses brought quite a number of other kings into 
the arms of Judaism. 

Thus, King Aziz, of Emesa, was converted to Judaism in order 
to marry Drusilla, the sister of Agrippa II. This lady layer 
rewarded his devotion rather shabbily by deserting her royal lord 
for a Roman Procurator named Felix. Her sister Berenice, for 
whose sake King Polemon had himself circumcised, did no better. 
In fact Polemon became disgusted, because of his wife’s lewdness, 
not only with the wife, but also with her religion. But Madame 
Berenice, being accustomed to changes of men, was not at a loss 
for consolation. At first she had married a Marcus, and after 
his death her uncle Herod. After he too had died she lived with 
her brother Agrippa, until her marriage with the above-mentioned 
Polemon. Finally, however, she was advanced to the dignity of 
mistress of the Emperor Titus. 

While this lady was faithless to her people, there were many 
others who embraced Judaism, which had a certain fascination 
for them. Among them was Nero’s wife, Poppza Sabina, of 
whom we are told that she became a zealous Jewess, which did 
not, however, improve her moral conduct. 

Josephus relates of the inhabitants of the city of Damascus 
that they had intended, on the occasion of the Jewish insurrection 
under Nero, to wipe out the Jews who lived in the city. “They 
were afraid only of their wives, for almost every one of these was 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 263 


of the Jewish faith. They therefore kept their plan secret from 
the latter, and it was successful. They murdered 10,000 Jews 
in a single hour.” *° 

The forms by which conversion to Judaism was declared varied 
considerably. The most zealous of the new converts accepted it 
in its entirety. Their admission was based on three requirements; 
in the first place, circumcision; second, an immersion in order to 
purify them from pagan sinfulness; finally, a sacrifice. Women 
were, of course, exempt from the first requirement. 

But not all converts could bring themselves to obey all the 
rules of Jewish law without exception. We have seen that Judaism 
was full of contradictions, that it included on the one hand a 
highly enlightened international monotheism, and on the other an 
extremely narrow-minded tribal monotheism, thus uniting pure 
ethics with a timid retention of traditional customs, and therefore 
embracing not only ideas which appeared extremely modern and 
sublime to the people of that age, but also conceptions which 
must have seemed very strange and even repulsive, particularly 
to a Hellene or a Roman, and which therefore made social inter- 
course between the members of the Jewish community and non- 
Jews infinitely difficult. Among these were, for example, the 
dietary laws, the circumcision, and the strict observance of the 
Sabbath, the latter often going to ridiculous extremes. 

We learn from Juvenal that the fireless cooker, now considered 
an extremely modern invention in housekeeping, was already 
known to the ancient Jews. On the eve of the Sabbath they 
placed their victuals in baskets filled with hay, in order to keep 
them warm. Such a basket is said to have been lacking in no 
Jewish household. This is an indication of the inconveniences 
involved in a strict observance of the Sabbath. But this obser- 
vance was sometimes carried so far as to become disastrous to 
the Jews. Pious Jewish warriors, who were attacked by the enemy 
on the Sabbath, would neither defend themselves nor take to 
flight, but consented to be cut down without resistance, in order 
not to transgress God’s commandments. 

Not many were capable of such fanaticism and faith in God. 


40 Jewish War, ii, 20, 2. 


264 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


But even a less stringent enforcement of the Jewish law was not 
to everyone’s taste. We therefore find, together with those who 
entered the Jewish congregation and accepted all the consequences 
of the Jewish law, a number who took part in the Jewish divine 
service and attended the synagogues, but rejected the Jewish regu- 
lations. Outside of Palestine there were even many among the 
Jews themselves who did not set great store by these rules. They 
contented themselves in many cases with worshiping the true God 
and believing in the coming of the Messiah, dispensing with cir- 
cumcision and were satisfied to have the newly won friend of the 
congregation cleanse himself of his sins by immersion (baptism). 
These “pious” (sebomenoi) comrades of Judaism probably con- 
stituted the majority of those pagans who embraced the faith. 
They probably also constituted the most important recruiting 
ground for the Christian congregation when the latter began to 
operate outside of Jerusalem. 


d. Hatred of the Jews 


Great as was the propaganda power of Judaism, it evidently 
did not have quite the same effect on all classes. Many must 
have been repelled by Judaism, particularly the great landed pro- 
prietors, whose permanent habit of domicile and whose local nar- 
row-mindedness were most opposed to the restlessness and the 
international character of the merchant. Furthermore, the mer- 
chant made a portion of his profit at the expense of the land- 
owner, for the merchant would try to reduce as far as possible 
the price of the product sold by the landowner, and to screw up 
as high as possible the prices of those products purchased from 
him by the landowner. The great landowners have always been 
on excellent terms with usurious capital; we have seen that they 
derive much of their strength from usury at an early period. 
But the landowners were, as a rule, hostile to trade. 

However, the industrial employees working for the export trade 
were in a relation of hostility to the merchant, similar to that of 
the domestic workers today toward their jobbers. 

This opposition to trade took the form chiefly of an opposition 
to the Jews, who so firmly clung to their nationality and who, the 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 265 


less their language served to distinguish them from their sur- 
roundings, remained the more firmly attached to the traditional 
national customs, which were now most intimately fused with the 
national bond, religion, and which made the Jews the objects of 
such intense interest to the mass of the population outside of 
Palestine. While these peculiarities in most cases called forth 
only the derision of the mob, like everything that is foreign, they 
were regarded with hostility whenever they were felt to represent 
a class living on exploitation, which is the case with all merchants, 
and which at the same time was cemented together in a close 
international organization as opposed to the remainder of the 
population, and was increasing in wealth and privileges while 
the rest of the population were becoming visibly poorer and en- 
dowed with less and less rights. 

We may learn from Tacitus what was the impression made by 
Judaism on other peoples; he says: 

“New religious customs were introduced by Moses, which are 
opposed to those of other mortals. Among them everything is 
profane that to us is holy; and everything is permitted among 
them that is abhorrent to us.”” Among such usages he mentions 
the abstinence from pork, the frequent fasts, the Sabbath. 

“They defend these religious customs, whatever may have been 
their origin, on the ground of their great antiquity. Other repul- 
sive and abhorrent customs came into force by reason of their 
wickedness; for thus they brought it about that the worst persons 
became faithless to the religion of their fathers and brought them 
contributions and gifts: thus the wealth of the Jews increased. 
Which is also due to the fact that among themselves the most 
stringent honesty and a most solicitous charity prevail, combined 
with a hateful hostility to all others. They segregate themselves 
from the latter in their meals, they refrain from cohabiting with 
women of other faiths, but among themselves there is nothing 
that is not permitted. They introduced circumcision as a means 
of distinguishing themselves from others. Those joining their 
ranks also accept circumcision, and are filled with nothing but 
contempt for the gods, renunciation of their fatherland, disre- 
spect for parents, children and brothers, and they are constantly 


266 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


attempting to increase their numbers, and to kill one’s posterity 
appears to them as a crime. The souls of those killed in battle, 
or executed because of their religion, are considered by them as 
immortal; thence their tendency to beget children and their con- 
tempt for death.” 

Tacitus then discusses their rejection of all worship of images 
and concludes: “‘The customs of the Jews are senseless and sordid 
(Judeorum mos absurdus sordidusque).” * 

The satirists derided the Jews; jokes about Jews always found 
an eager public. 

In his Fourteenth Satire, Juvenal depicts the effects of a par- 
ent’s example on the children. A father who has a tendency 
toward Judaism sets a bad example for his children: 

“You will find men whose fate it is to have a father that keeps 
holy the Sabbath. Such people pray only to the clouds and to 
a god in Heaven. They believe that the flesh of pigs is not 
different from human flesh, because their father did not eat pigs’ 
flesh. Soon they part with their foreskins and despise the laws 
of the Romans. But they learn, and obey, and honor the Jewish 
laws, everything, in short, that Moses handed down in his secret 
scrolls. They will not show the way to one who has lost it except 
to worshipers of the same faith, they will lead only the circum- 
cised (verpos) to the spring for which the thirsty languish. Such 
is the influence of a father for whom every seventh day was a 
day of rest (ignavus), on which he refrained from any expression 
of life.” * 

With the increase of the general social misery, the hostility 
to the Jews also increased. 

This hostility was at that early day already the simplest and 
least heroic method of expressing dissatisfaction with the decline 
of state and society. It was not an easy matter to attack the 
aristocrats and owners of latifundia, the usurers and generals, or 
even the despots on the throne; but the Jews were almost defense- 
less as far as the state power was concerned, in spite of their 
privileges. 

In the early days of the Imperial Era, when the impoverish- 


41 Histories, v, 5. 42 Satires, xiv, 96-105. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 267 


ment of the peasantry had already progressed very far, and a 
very numerous rabble was accumulating in the cities, eager for 
plunder, regular pogroms were occasionally resorted to. 

Mommsen has an excellent description of one of these pogroms, 
which took place under the Emperor Gaius Caligula (37-41 A.D.), 
in other words, at about the time in which Christ is said to 
have died. 

“A grandson of Herod I and the beautiful Mariamne, named 
Herod Agrippa, after the protector and friend of his grandfather, 
and who was probably the most worthless and good-for-nothing 
of the numerous sons of princes living in Rome, but who never- 
theless, or perhaps for that very reason, was the favorite and the 
childhood friend of the new emperor, and who had until then 
been known only for his lewdness and his debts, had received 
as a present from his protector whom he was so fortunate as to 
notify first of the death of Tiberius, one of the vacant petty 
Jewish principalities, with the royal title into the bargain. Herod 
Agrippa in the year 38 a.D., on his journey to his new kingdom, 
arrived at the city of Alexandria, where he had tried a few months 
before, having run away from the payment of his due notes, to 
borrow money from Jewish bankers. When he appeared in public 
in Alexandria in his royal garments, and with his splendidly 
equipped halberdiers, he naturally inspired the non-Jewish in- 
habitants of this great city—fond as it was of ridicule and of 
scandal—and far from friendly to the Jews, to indulge in a parody 
on the situation, nor did the matter stop there. It culminated in 
a furious hunting-out of the Jews. Those dwellings of the Jews 
which were not close together were robbed and burned, Jewish 
ships in port were plundered, Jews found in non-Jewish quarters 
were maltreated and slain. But it was impossible to effect any- 
thing by violence against the purely Jewish quarters of the city. 
The leaders of the persecution then hit upon the plan of conse- 
crating the synagogues, to which they were devoting most of their 
attention, unless they had already been destroyed, as temples of 
the new ruler and to set up images of the latter in all of them, 
in the chief synagogue a statue on a quadriga. Everybody, in- 
cluding also the Jews and the government, knew that Emperor 


268 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Gaius considered himself seriously—as seriously as his confused 
spirit would permit—to be a true god in the flesh. The Governor 
Avilius Flaccus, an able man and an excellent administrator under 
Tiberius, but now handicapped by the disfavor in which he stood 
with the new emperor, and fearing to be recalled and indicted at 
any moment, did not disdain to utilize this occasion for his re- 
habilitation. He not only issued an edict forbidding the offering 
of resistance to the erection of these statues in the synagogues, 
but even entered into the spirit of the pogrom. He ordered that 
the Sabbath be abolished, he declared further in his edicts that 
these tolerated strangers had taken possession without permission 
of the best portions of the city; they were now assigned to a 
single one of the five quarters, and all other houses belonging 
to Jews were handed over to the rabble, while their former in- 
habitants lay without shelter on the strand in great numbers. 
No supplication was even listened to; thirty-eight members of 
the Council of Elders, which ruled the Jewish community at the 
time instead of the Ethknarch, were flogged in the open Circus 
before the entire population. Four hundred houses lay in ruins; 
trade and traffic were at a standstill; the factories were closed. 
No one could give assistance but the emperor. Two Alexandrian 
delegations appeared before him, that of the Jews led by the 
above-mentioned Philo, a scholar of the Neo-Judaic tendency, 
with more gentleness than valor in his heart, but who nevertheless 
bravely interceded for his people in this difficult moment; that 
of the anti-Jews led by Apion, also an Alexandrian scholar and 
writer, the ‘world’s clapper’ (cymbalum mundi), as Emperor 
Tiberius was wont to call him, full of great words and greater 
lies, of the most impudent ignorance and unquestioning faith in 
himself, with knowledge if not of men, at least of their baseness, 
a celebrated master of eloquence as well as of demagogy, quick- 
witted, sharp, shameless, and unconditionally loyal. The result 
of the transaction might have been expected in advance; the 
emperor admitted the two parties while he was going through the 
grounds of his gardens, but instead of giving the supplicants a 
hearing, he put derisive questions to them, which were greeted 
by the anti-Jews in defiance of all etiquette with loud laughter, 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 269 


and since he was in good humor he contented himself with an 
expression of his regret that these people, otherwise good fellows, 
should be so unhappily constituted as not to be able to grasp 
his innate divine nature, which he no doubt meant seriously. 
Apion thus had the best of the argument, and in all places where 
the anti-Jews felt so disposed the synagogues were transformed 
into temples to Gaius.” * 

Is there anyone who is not reminded by this description of 
present-day conditions in Russia? ** And the similarity is not 
limited to the pogroms. We cannot mention Gaius, the insane 
beast on the imperial throne, without thinking of the high-born 
protectors of the pogroms in Russia. These rascals are not even 
original in their methods! 

In Rome itself the available military power was too great, and 
the emperors were too strongly opposed to any popular move- 
ment, to permit any such scenes to take place in that city, but 
since the imperial power had been solidified, and the Caesars no 
longer needed the Jews, they oppressed them. In view of the 
distrust which the Caesars had for all organizations, even the 
most innocent ones, this international religious organization must 
have impressed them very unfavorably. 

Persecutions of the Jews already began under ‘Tiberius. 
Josephus describes their cause as follows: “In Rome there was a 
Jew, an exceedingly godless man, who had been accused of many 
offenses in his native country, and had become a fugitive to escape 
the penalty. This man set himself up to be a teacher of the 
Mosaic Law, and together with three confederates persuaded 
Fulvia, an aristocratic lady who had accepted the Jewish faith, 
and had put herself under his instruction, to forward a present 
consisting of gold and purple to the Temple in Jerusalem. Having 
received this present from the lady they used it for themselves, 
for no other had been their purpose. Saturninus, Fulvia’s hus- 
band, complained of this to his friend, the Emperor Tiberius, at 
her request, and Tiberius immediately ordered all Jews to be 


43 The Provinces of the Roman Empire, vol. ii, pp. 191-194. 
44 Kautsky was writing in 1908,—TRANSLATOR. 


270 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


banished from Rome. Four thousand Jews were made soldiers 
and sent to Sardinia.” *° 

This story is typical of the tendency of distinguished ladies 
in Roman court society to embrace Judaism. If this incident 
served as the occasion for such severe measures against the entire 
Jewry of Rome, it surely could not have been the real reason for 
them. It would have been sufficient to punish the guilty, unless 
strong hostility was felt for the entire Jewish community. No 
less hostile was Gaius Caligula, as we have seen above. Under 
Claudius (41-54 A.D.) the Jews were again driven out of Rome 
because, as Suetonius (Claudius, chap. xxv) reports, they aroused 
disturbances under the leadership of a certain Chrestos. The 
latter was not a Jew by birth, but a Greek converted to Judaism. 
This incident again serves as an illustration both of the hatred 
for the Jews as well as of the strength of the Jewish propaganda. 


e. Jerusalem 


It is manifest that such an attitude toward the Jews on the 
part of the ruling classes as well as of the people themselves 
must have made the Jews look longingly toward Jerusalem and 
its country environment, the only corner of the earth in which 
they were at least in a measure masters of their own houses, in 
which the entire population consisted of Jews, the only corner 
whence the promised great empire of the Jews was to emanate, 
and where the longed-for Messiah would establish the dominion 
of Judaism. And this, in spite of the increasing impossibility of 
finding sufficient means of subsistence in their home country. 

Jerusalem remained the center, remained the capital of Juda- 
ism, growing with the growth of the latter. It again became a 
wealthy city, a city of about 200,000 inhabitants, but it no longer 
based its greatness and its wealth on the warlike power or the 
trade of the peoples of Palestine, as it had under David and 
Solomon, but only on the Temple of Jehovah. Every Jew, no 
matter where he might live, had to contribute to its maintenance, 
for which purpose he was obliged to pay annually a Temple tax 
of one double drachma, which was sent to Jerusalem. 


45 Antiquities, xviii, 3, 8. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 271 


In addition, the sanctuary received many other extraordinary 
gifts. Not every such gift was made away with like the valuable 
consideration which the four Jewish swindlers took from Fulvia, 
according to Josephus. But besides this, each pious Jew was 
obliged at least once in his life to make a pilgrimage to the place 
in which his God dwelt and which was the only place where the 
God received these offerings. The synagogues of the Jews in the 
various cities outside of Jerusalem were only places of gathering 
and prayer, as well as schools, but not temples in which offerings 
might be made to Jehovah. 

The Temple taxes and the pilgrims necessarily brought im- 
mense sums of money to Jerusalem and kept a large number of 
persons profitably occupied. Directly or indirectly, not only the 
priests of the Temple and the scribes lived on the worship of 
Jehovah, but even the shopkeepers and money changers, the 
artisans, the farmers, peasants, the cattle-breeders, the fishermen 
of Judea and Galilee, who found an excellent market in Jeru- 
salem for their wheat and honey, for their lambs and kids, as 
well as for the fish that were caught on the seacoast and in Lake 
Gennesareth, and sent dried or salted to Jerusalem. When Jesus 
found buyers and sellers in the Temple, money-changers and 
pigeon-dealers, this was fully in accord with the task that had 
devolved upon the Temple for Jerusalem. 

What had been represented in Jewish literature as the condition 
of the oldest ancestors, was actually true of the period in which 
this literature was produced: the entire Jewish population of 
Palestine now lived literally on the worship of Jehovah, and was 
threatened with destruction as soon as this worship should sub- 
side, or even assume different forms. There was no lack of 
attempts to establish other places for the worship of Jehovah, 
outside of Jerusalem. 

Thus a certain Onias, the son of a Jewish high priest, erected 
a temple to Jehovah in Egypt under Ptolemy Philometor (173-146 
B.C.), with the assistance of the king, who expected that the 
Egyptian Jews would be his more faithful subjects if they had 
a temple of their own in his country. 

But the new temple did not attain any significance; possibly 


979 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


just for the reason that its object was to secure the Jews of Egypt 
as faithful subjects. In Egypt they continued to remain strangers, 
a tolerated minority: how could their Messiah come from Egypt, 
who was to bring independence and national greatness to their 
people? But the faith in the Messiah was one of the strongest 
motive forces in the worship of Jehovah. 

Far more inconvenient was a competitive temple not far from 
Jerusalem on Mt. Garrizim near Sikhem, which had been built 
by the Samaritan sect, as Josephus reports, in the time of Alex- 
ander the Great—according to Schirer, a century earlier—and 
where the sect carried on its worship of Jehovah. It is not sur- 
prising that the most acute hostility arose between these two 
competitors. But the old established business was too rich and 
enjoyed too high a reputation to be much injured by the younger 
enterprise. In spite of all the propaganda of the Samaritans, 
they did not increase as rapidly as did the Jews, who considered 
that their Lord dwelt in Jerusalem. 

But the more the monopoly at Jerusalem was menaced, the 
more seriously did its inhabitants watch over the “purity” of 
their worship, and the more fanatically did they oppose any 
effort to alter anything about it, or to go so far as impose an 
alteration upon it by force. Thence the religious fanaticism and 
the religious intolerance of the Jews of Jerusalem, which are in 
such curious contrast with the religious liberality of the other 
nations of that time. The other nations regarded their gods as 
means of explaining incomprehensible phenomena, also as a means 
of consolation and aid in situations in which human strength 
seemed insufficient. But the Jews of Palestine regarded their God 
as the means by which they lived. They all now had the attitude 
toward God which is usually the attitude of his priests only. 
Priestly fanaticism in Palestine became a fanaticism of the entire 
population. 

But although this population was united in defense of the wor- 
ship of Jehovah, although it opposed as one man anyone who 
would dare violate it, the class distinctions nevertheless made 
themselves felt; not even Jerusalem was spared them. Every 
class sought to please Jehovah and to protect his Temple in some 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 273 


other way. And every class was waiting, in its own fashion, for 
the Messiah that was to come. 


f. The Sadducees 


Josephus reports in the Eighth Chapter of the Second Book of 
his History of the Jewish War, that there are three intellectual 
currents among the Jews; the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the 
Essenes. Concerning the former two he goes on to say: 

“As for the two other sects, it is believed that the Pharisees 
interpret the law the more severely. They were the first who 
formed a sect that believed that everything is determined by Fate 
and by God. In their opinion it may indeed depend on man 
whether he performs good or evil, but Fate has its influence on 
man’s actions. They believe, concerning the soul of man, that 
it is immortal, and that the souls of the good will enter into new 
bodies, while those of the wicked will be tormented by eternal 
suffering. 

“The other sect is that of the Sadducees. They deny that Fate 
has any influence at all and declare that God may not be blamed 
for the good or evil actions of the individual; man alone is 
responsible for these, as he may perform good actions and refrain 
from evil actions, in accordance with his own free will. They 
also deny that souls are immortal and that there is to be any re- 
ward or punishment after death. 

“The Pharisees are charitable and try to live in concord with 
the masses of the people. The Sadducees, on the other hand, 
are cruel even to each other, and severe both with regard to their 
fellow-countrymen as well as toward strangers.” 

These sects are here represented as embodying certain re- 
ligious views. But although Jewish history has thus far been 
studied almost exclusively by theologians to whom religion is 
everything while class oppositions count for nothing, even these 
historians have discovered that the contrast between the Sad- 
ducees and the Pharisees was not at bottom a religious one, but 
a class opposition, a hostility that can be compared with that 
between the nobility and the Third Estate before the French 
Revolution. 


274 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


The Sadducees were the representatives of the priestly nobility, 
which had gained control of the Jewish State, and exercised this 
control, first under Persian domination, later under that of the 
successors of Alexander the Great. This priesthood was absolute 
master of the Temple. Through its control of the Temple it 
ruled Jerusalem and all of Judaism besides. To the priesthood 
came all the taxes that were paid to the Temple, and they were 
by no means inconsiderable. Up to the banishment, of course, 
the receipts of the priesthood had been modest and irregular, 
but from this time on they increased tremendously. We have 
already mentioned the double drachma tax (or the half-shekel, 
equivalent to about forty cents in American money) which every 
male Jew, rich or poor, who was over two years of age, had to 
pay annually to the Temple; we have also mentioned the presents 
flowing into the Temple. We shall give only a few examples to 
indicate the amounts received by the Temple. Mithridates on 
one occasion confiscated eight hundred talents on the Island of 
Kos, which were destined for the Temple.** 

Cicero says in the oration delivered in 59 B.c. in defense of 
Flaccus, who had been Governor of the Province of Asia two 
years before: “Since the money of the Jews passes out of Italy 
and all the provinces each year in order to be forwarded to Jeru- 
salem, Flaccus ordered that no money should be forwarded (to 
Jerusalem) from the province of Asia (Western Asia Minor).” 
Cicero further relates that Flaccus confiscated funds that had 
been gathered in various towns in Asia Minor, destined for the 
Temple; in Appamea alone he confiscated one hundred pounds 
of gold. 

In addition, there were the sacrifices. Formerly those making 
offerings had themselves consumed the sacrifices in a merry feast, 
in which the priest might only participate. But after the Exile 
the share of those making sacrifices is limited more and more, 
while that of the priests increases. Having been a contribution 
to a merry banquet, consumed by the givers themselves in pleas- 
ant company, to be a delight not only to God but also to man, 
this gift becomes a mere tax in kind, demanded by God for him- 


46 Josephus, Antiquities, xiv, 7; one talent—$1,100. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 275 


self, z.e., for his priests. And the amount of these taxes increased 
more and more. Not only did the offerings in animals and other 
foodstuffs now belong more and more exclusively to the priests 
but there were added the payment of the tithes (the tenth part) 
of all agricultural products, as well as the payment of the first- 
born of every animal. The first-born of “clean” animals, cattle, 
sheep, goats, in other words, such animals as were eaten, was to 
be paid in kind in the House of God. ‘Unclean” animals, horses, 
asses, camels, could be replaced by money, as was also the case 
with the first-born human male. The charge for the latter was 
five shekels. 

This gives us a good idea of how much the Jewish priesthood 
obtained from the people, and these quantities were increased 
later; thus the third part of a shekel was soon raised to half a 
shekel, as indicated in Nehemiah x, 32-39: 

“Also we made ordinances for us, to charge ourselves yearly 
with the third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our 
God. . . . And we cast the lots among the priests, the Levites, 
and the people, for the wood-offering, to bring it to the house of 
our God, after the houses of our fathers, at times appointed year 
by year, to burn upon the altar of the Lord our God, as it is 
written in the law: and to bring the firstfruits of our ground, 
and the firstfruits of all fruit of all trees, year by year, unto the 
house of the Lord: also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, 
as it is written in the law, and the firstlings of our herds and of our 
flocks, to bring to the house of our God, unto the priests that 
minister in the house of our God: and that we should bring the 
firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all 
manner of trees, of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the 
chambers of the house of our God: and the tithes of our ground 
unto the Levites, that the same Levites might have the tithes in 
all the cities of our tillage. And the priest the son of Aaron shall 
be with the Levites, when the Levites take tithes: and the Levites 
shall bring up the tithe of the tithes unto the house of our God, 
to the chambers, into the treasure house. For the children of 
Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the offering of the 
corn, of the new wine, and the oil, unto the chambers, where 


276 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


are the vessels of the sanctuary, and the priests that minister, 
and the porters, and the singers: and we will not forsake the 
house of our God.” 

It is evident that this temple was not exactly comparable to a 
church edifice. It included immense storehouses, in which there 
were great stores of natural products, and also of gold and silver. 
Accordingly it had to be strongly fortified and well guarded. 
Like the pagan temples it was considered to be a place in which 
money and property were particularly well safeguarded. Like 
them, therefore, it was very often used even by private persons 
as a place in which to deposit their treasures. Jehovah probably 
did not undertake without recompense to carry out this function 
of a bank of deposit. 

However that may be, it is certain that the wealth of the 
Jerusalem priesthood increased tremendously. 

Marcus Crassus, Caesar’s fellow-conspirator, whose acquaint- 
ance we have already made, took advantage of this condition when 
undertaking his predatory expedition against the Parthians. On 
his journey, he called at Jerusalem and pocketed the treasures 
of the Jewish Temple. 

“When Crassus was about to set forth against the Parthians, 
he came to Judea and took all the money (xeyjuata) from the 
Temple, which Pompey had left intact, two thousand talents, as 
well as all the (uncoined) gold, amounting to eight thousand 
talents. In addition, he robbed a bar of gold weighing three 
hundred minz; but a mina with us weighs two and one-half 
pounds.” 7 

This amounts to about twelve million dollars altogether; and 
yet the Temple was soon filled with gold again. 

Membership in the priesthood was limited to certain families. 
They constituted an aristocracy by birth, among whom this office 
was hereditary. According to Josephus, who refers to Hecateus 
(Polemic against Apion, I, 22), “there are fifteen hundred 
Jewish priests, who receive tithes and administer the community.” 

Among this priesthood a division gradually ensued between a 
higher and a lower aristocracy. Certain families managed to 


47 Josephus, Antiquities, xiv, 7. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 277 


arrogate the entire authority of government permanently to them- 
selves, and thus increased their wealth, which in turn meant a 
further increase of influence. They constituted a firmly coherent 
clique which always appointed the High Priest out of its own 
ranks. They consolidated their power by hiring mercenaries and 
defending their authority against the other priests, whom they 
succeeded in relegating to a lower position. 

Thus Josephus reports: “About this time King Agrippa be- 
stowed the High Priesthood on Ishmael, Phabi’s son. But the 
High Priests came into conflict with the priests and elders of the 
people in Jerusalem. Each of them surrounded himself with a 
gang of the most lawless and troublesome persons, becoming their 
leader. ‘They occasionally had wordy conflicts, in which they 
vituperated each other and threw stones at each other. No one 
was able to stop them, their actions were of such violence that 
it seemed there was no authority in the town at all. The High 
Priests finally became so audacious that they did not hesitate to 
send their soldiers into the granaries, in order to take away the 
tithes belonging to the priests, so that a few impoverished priests 
starved to death.” ** 

Of course conditions did not become as bad as this until the 
last stages of the Jewish community had been reached. 

But from its very beginning, the priestly aristocracy had 
exalted itself above the masses of the people and become imbued 
with views and inclinations opposed to those of the people, par- 
ticularly those of the Jewish population of Palestine. This be- 
came particularly apparent in their foreign policy. 

We have seen that Palestine, owing to its geographical position, 
was constantly subject to foreign rule or at least to the danger 
of foreign rule. There were two ways in which this condition 
could have been resisted or at least attenuated: diplomacy, or 
insurrection by force. 

While the Persian Empire still existed, neither of these methods 
gave promise of any success, but the situation became quite dif- 
ferent after Alexander had destroyed this empire. The new form 
of state which he put in its place disintegrated after his death 


48 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, xx, 8, 8, cf. also 9, 2. 


278 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and again we find a Syrian-Babylonian Empire struggling against 
an Egyptian Empire for dominion over Israel. But now both 
were ruled by Greek dynasties, one by the Seleukides, the other 
by the Ptolemies, and both became more and more imbued with 
the Greek spirit. 

It seemed futile to attempt to defeat either of these powers by 
military means; but it was all the more possible to make gains 
through astute diplomacy, by joining forces with the stronger 
and thus achieving a privileged position as a portion of the latter’s 
empire. But owing to the hatred for foreigners and a rejection 
of the superior Greek civilization and its instruments of power, 
this was not done; furthermore, it would have been necessary to 
absorb this civilization. 

The aristocracy at Jerusalem was being impelled in the direc- 
tion of accepting the Greek culture, owing to their better knowl- 
edge of things foreign, which was an advantage given them by 
their social position as compared with the mass of the population; 
but their wealth also impelled them in this direction. The repro- 
ductive arts, as well as the arts of enjoyment, had not flourished 
in Palestine; but the Greeks had brought these arts to a level 
that was above anything achieved in any country at that time 
or for many, many centuries thereafter. The ruling classes of 
all nations, even of victorious Rome, were borrowing the forms 
of splendor and of the enjoyment of life from Greece. The Greek 
forms were adopted by all exploiting classes in the ancient world, 
just as the French forms were adopted in the Eighteenth Century 
by all European exploiters. 

As the exploitation of the Jews by their aristocracy increased, 
and with the rising wealth of the latter, this aristocracy became 
more eager for Hellenic culture. 

Thus, the First Book of the Maccabees laments concerning the 
period of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B.c.): 

“In those days worthless persons originated in Israel; these 
persuaded many, by saying: Why not let us fraternize with the 
nations that are round about! for much misery has befallen us 
since we have cut ourselves off from them! Such speech pleased 
them well, and some of the people declared themselves ready to 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 279 


go to the king, who gave them authority to introduce the customs 
of the pagans. Therefore, they built at Jerusalem a gymnasium 
(in other words, an arena in which naked wrestlers appeared) 
according to the custom of the pagans, restored their prepuces 
and thus became traitors to the sacred covenant, and also united 
themselves with the pagans, and sold themselves to do evil.” 

So evil were these wicked persons, who made themselves arti- 
ficial foreskins, that they even denied their Jewish names, re- 
placing them by Greek names. A High Priest named Jesus called 
himself Jason, another High Priest named Eliochim called himself 
Alkimos; a Menassah renamed himself Menelaus. 

But the masses of the Jewish people were offended by this 
encouragement of foreign Hellenic ways. We have several times 
pointed out how slight was the development of industry and art 
in Judea. The advance of the Hellenic influence meant the in- 
troduction of foreign products to replace domestic products. But 
the Hellene always came as an oppressor and exploiter, whether 
he was king of Syria or king of Egypt. Judea, already drained 
dry by its aristocracy, naturally felt the tributes to be a greater 
burden that had now to be paid to the foreign monarchs and 
their officials. And as a rule the aristocrats managed to shield 
themselves by having themselves appointed as representatives 
and tax collectors for the foreign masters; furthermore, they 
were able to enrich themselves by applying usurious practices to 
those oppressed by the taxes. But the people felt only the burden 
of foreign rule. 

This had already taken place under Persian rule, as is very 
neatly described in an account given by the Jew Nehemiah, who 
had been appointed by King Artaxerxes to be his governor in 
Judea (445 B.c.). He gives us the following record of his own 
activities: 

“And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives 
against their brethren the Jews. For there were that said: We, 
our sons, and our daughters, are many: therefore we take up 
corn for them, that we may eat, and live. Some also there were 
that said: We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, houses, that 
we may buy corn, because of the dearth. There were also that 


280 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


said: We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute, and that 
upon our lands and vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as the flesh 
of our brethren, our children as their children, and, lo, we bring 
into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and 
some of our daughters are brought into bondage already: neither 
is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our Jands 
and vineyards. 

“And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. 
Then I consulted with myself and I rebuked the nobles, and the 
rulers, and said unto them: Ye execute usury, everyone of his 
brother. And I set a great assembly against them. And I said 
unto them: We after our ability have redeemed our brethren 
the Jews, which were sold unto the heathen; and will ye even 
sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us. Then held 
they their peace and found nothing to answer. Also I said: It 
is not good that ye do; ought ye not to walk in the fear of our 
God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I 
likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might exact of them 
money and grain: I pray you, let us leave off this usury. Restore, 
I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, 
their oliveyards, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the 
money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that ye exact of 
them. Then said they: We will restore them, and will require 
nothing of them: so will we do as thou sayest. Then I called 
the priests and took an oath of them, that they should do accord- 
ing to this promise. Also I shook my lap and said: So God shake 
out every man from his house, and from his labor, that performeth 
not this promise, even thus be he shaken out, and emptied. And 
all the congregation said, Amen, and praised the Lord. And the 
people did according to this promise. 

“Moreover, in the time that I was appointed to be their Gov- 
ernor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even unto 
the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes the King, that is, twelve 
years, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the gover- 
nor. But the former governors that had been before me were 
chargeable unto the people, and had taken of them bread and 
wine, besides forty shekels of silver; yea, even their servants 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 281 


bare rule over the people: but so did not I, because of the fear 
of God. Yea, also I continued in the work of this wall (the city 
walls of Jerusalem), neither bought we new land: and all my 
servants were gathered thither unto the work. Moreover, there 
were at my table an hundred and fifty of the Jews and rulers, 
besides those that came unto us from among the heathen that are 
about us. Now that which was prepared for me daily was one 
ox and six choice sheep; also fowls were prepared for me, and 
once in ten days store of all sorts of wine; yet for all this required 
not I the bread of the governor, because the bondage was heavy 
upon this people. Think upon me, my God, for good, according 
to all that I have done for this people.” *° 

Such self-praise is not unusual in ancient documents, particu- 
larly in the Orient. But it would be going too far if we should 
always assume that the official in question had really deserved 
as well of his people as his boastful story would go to show. But 
one thing is clearly shown by such tales, namely: the manner in 
which governors and nobles as a rule exploited and oppressed 
the people. Nehemiah would have had no reason for boasting of 
his actions if he had not regarded them as exceptional. No one 
will boastfully declare that he has not stolen silver teaspoons 
unless such thefts are the regular thing in the society of which 
he is a part. 

Under the Syrian and Egyptian kings the taxes of Palestine 
were farmed out. The tax farmer as a rule was the High Priest. 
But he occasionally met with competitors of his own class, and 
then there was always a row among the dignified priesthood. 

Therefore, the mass of the people in Judea had much more 
cause to oppose the foreign rule than did the aristocracy which 
benefited by it. Their rage against foreigners was further stim- 
ulated by their ignorance of the true alignment of forces. The 
mass of the Jews in Palestine did not know how immensely supe- 
rior was the opponent’s strength. For all these reasons they 
scorned diplomacy and demanded that the yoke of foreign rule 
be cast off by force. But they did not go beyond this; they did 
not speak of the yoke of the aristocracy. The latter also was a 


49 Nehemiah v, I-19. 


282 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


heavy burden to the people, but after all, both in Jerusalem and 
in the surrounding country, the people gained their entire liveli- 
hood by reason of the Temple, by reason of the significance of 
its worship and its priesthood. Therefore, the entire fury caused 
by their wretchedness was necessarily concentrated on the foreign 
exploiters alone. Democracy was transformed to chauvinism. 

Owing to a fortunate turn of events, an insurrection of this 
little people against its mighty conquerors was crowned with 
success on one occasion. This event occurred at the time, as we 
have already pointed out, when the empire of the Seleukides was 
profoundly disorganized owing to internal warfare, and was en- 
gaged in a process of complete disintegration, like that of the 
Ptolemies, while both empires were fighting each other furiously, 
and paving the way for their complete subjection by the new 
rulers of the East as well as the West, the Romans. 

Like every decaying system, this system increased its oppressive 
measures, which naturally produced resistance. The attitude of 
Jewish patriotism became more and more rebellious, and its cen- 
ter and leadership was found in the organization of the Asideans. 

Probably the Book of Daniel is one of the products of Asidzan 
activity; it was written about this time (between 167 and 164 
B.c.), a pamphlet prophesying to the oppressed that Israel would 
soon arise and make itself free. Israel would be its own savior, 
its own Messiah. This is the beginning of the series of messianic 
propaganda pamphlets which proclaimed the defeat of foreign 
rule and the victory of the Jews, their liberation and rule over the 
nations of the earth. 

But in the Book of Daniel, this thought is still expressed in 
a democratic form. The Messiah is still represented as the people 
itself; as “the people of the saints of the most High.” “And 
the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom 
under the whole Heaven shall be given to the people of the saints 
of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and 
all dominions shall serve and obey him.” °° 

This messianic prophecy soon appeared to have been splendidly 
fulfilled. The guerilla warfare against the oppressors was assum- 


50 Daniel, vii, 27. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 283 


ing larger and larger dimensions, until fortunate chieftains of the 
house of the Hasmonzans, including in the first place Judas 
Maccabeus, succeeded in proving their mettle in the conflicts in 
the open fields with the Syrian troops, and finally in conquering 
Jerusalem, which was being held by the Syrians. Judea became 
free and even extended its boundaries. After Judas Maccabeus 
had fallen (160 B.c.), his brother Simon had courage enough 
to achieve a task which has been since achieved by many a 
general of democracy who, after having conquered freedom for 
his people by successful warfare, has snatched away this freedom 
and placed the crown on his own head. Or rather, Simon per- 
mitted the people to place the crown upon him. A great gathering 
of the priests and the people decided that he should be High 
Priest, supreme war lord, and Prince of the people (archiereus, 
strategos and ethnarches, 141 B.c.). Thus Simon became the 
founder of the Hasmonzan dynasty. He probably felt how inse- 
cure the newly won independence was, for he immediately 
hastened to seek foreign support. In the year 139 we find a dele- 
gation, sent by him, in Rome, for the purpose of requesting the 
Romans to guarantee the Jewish territory. This was the dele- 
gation to which we have already referred, a few members of which 
were deported for their proselytic activities; but the delegation 
attained its purpose. 

But Simon did not imagine that his rule would be of short 
duration, until the new friends of Judea came out as its most 
dangerous enemies, who were ultimately destined to destroy the 
Jewish State forever. So long as civil wars raged among the 
various Roman leaders, the fate of Judea still had its ups and 
downs. Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.c., taking many 
prisoners of war, whom he sent to Rome as slaves; he restricted 
the Jewish territory to Judea, Galilee, Perzea, and imposed a tax 
upon the Jews. Crassus plundered the Temple in 54 B.c.; after 
his defeat, the Jews rebelled against the Romans in Galilee, and 
were put down, many of the prisoners being sold as slaves. 
Caesar, in his turn, treated the Jews better, made them his 
friends. The civil wars after Caesar’s death devastated Judea 
also and imposed heavy burdens upon it. After the victory of 


284 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Augustus, the latter again, like Caesar, showed himself favorable 
to the Jews, but Judea remained dependent on the Romans, was 
again occupied by Roman troops, came under the supervision of 
Rome and finally under direct administration by Roman officials, 
and we have already seen how these gay fellows disported them- 
selves in the provinces, which they drained completely dry. 
Therefore the hatred for the Romans grew apace, particularly 
among the masses of the population. The puppet kings and 
priestly aristocrats who ruled them tried to gain the favor of the 
new Roman masters, as they had tried to ingratiate themselves 
with the Greek masters before the Maccabzan insurrection, 
though many of them must have hated the strangers bitterly at 
the bottom of their hearts. But their party, that of the Sad- 
ducees, was capable of offering less and less resistance to the 
democratic patriotic party, that of the Pharisees. 

Josephus reports concerning so early a period as the year 
100 B.c., in his Antiquities: “‘The rich were on the side of the 
Sadducees, but the mass of the people clung to the Pharisees” 
(xiii, 10, 6), and he also informs us concerning Herod’s period 
(the time of Christ): 

“The sect of the Sadducees has but few adherents, but they 
are the most distinguished people of the country. However, 
affairs of state are not conducted according to their views. As 
soon as they attain public office, they must willy-nilly act in 
accordance with the views of the Pharisees, for otherwise the 
common people would not tolerate them.” (Antiquities xviii, 1.4.) 

The Pharisees were gradually becoming the mental rulers of 
the Jewish people, taking the place of their priestly aristocracy. 


g. The Pharisees 


We have already made the acquaintance, in the Maccabzan 
conflicts, of the pious ones, the Asidzans. A few decades later 
under John Hyrcanus (135-104 B.c.), the bearers of this doctrine 
appear under the name of Pharisees; the bearers of the opposite 
doctrine now for the first time take the name of Sadducees. 

The origin of the latter name is not clear; perhaps the word 
is derived from the priest Zadok, after whom the priesthood were 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 285 


called the race of Zadokides. The Pharisees (perushim) really 
are those segregated, but called themselves “comrades” (chabe- 
rim) or confederates. 

Josephus on one occasion tells us there were 6,000 of them, 
which was quite a political organization for such a small country. 
He reports from the time of Herod (37-4 B.c.): 

“But there then existed people among the Jews who were 
proud of their strict observance of the law of their fathers, and 
who believed that God had a special affection for them. These 
people were called Pharisees. They had great power and were 
best able to oppose the king, but they were wise enough to wait 
for an opportunity which would seem favorable for such an insur- 
rection. When the entire Jewish people took an oath to be faithful 
to the emperor (Augustus) and to obey the king (Herod), these 
men refused to take the oath, and there were more than 6,000 
of them.” ™ 

Herod, the cruel tyrant who was ever ready to resort to the 
death penalty, did not dare punish severely this refusal to take 
the oath of subjection, which is a sign of his respect for the 
influence of the Pharisees on the masses of the people. 

The Pharisees became the spiritual masters of the masses; 
among the Pharisees, the “‘scribes,” or literati, who are always 
mentioned together with them in the New Testament, the rabbis 
(rabbi = my lord, monsieur), were the dominant group. 

The class of the intellectuals was originally the priestly caste, 
among the Jews as well as everywhere else in the Orient. But 
this class in Judea suffered the fate of every aristocracy. With 
its increase in wealth went an increase in its neglect of the func- 
tions on which its privileged position was based. They may hardly 
be said to have done more than carry out the perfunctory cere- 
monials of worship that were assigned to them. They neglected 
more and more their scientific, literary, legislative, and judicial 
activities, with the result that the latter fell almost entirely into 
the hands of educated elements rising from the people. 

The judicial and legislative activities attained particular im- 


51 Antiquities, xvii, 2, 4. 


286 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


portance. Legislative gatherings are unknown to the nations of 
the ancient Orient. All their law takes the form of precedent, 
of ancient law. To be sure, the social development may continue, 
may produce new conditions, and new problems, requiring new 
legal formulation; but the feeling that the law remains ever the 
same, that it is from God, is so deeply rooted in the popular mind 
that the new laws are more readily accepted when they assume 
the form of the habitual law, the traditional law, existing from 
time immemorial, and seeming new only for the reason that they 
have been in disuse. 

The simplest means at the disposal of the ruling classes for 
making new law look like old law is that of forging documents. 

The priesthood of Judea, as we have already seen in several 
cases, made extensive use of this practice. This was not difficult 
in a country in which the masses felt that a single ruling class 
served as experts and preservers of the religious traditions. But 
in the countries in which a new class of persons with literary 
education was arising by the side of the ancient priesthood, it 
became quite difficult for either of these classes to try to repre- 
sent any innovation as a work created by Moses or some other 
authority in ancient times. For now the competing class was 
keeping a sharp eye on the practices of such forgers. 

There is an uninterrupted effort on the part of the rabbis 
throughout the two centuries preceding the destruction of Jeru- 
salem by the Romans to cut a breach in the canon of sacred 
writings laid down by the priesthood, and to increase it by the 
addition of new literary productions which were to be represented 
as ancient, and therefore entitled to the same respect as the 
earlier writings; but this effort met with no success. 

In his Polemic against Apion (i, 7 and 8), Josephus examines 
the plausibility of the Jewish writings: “For not every man has 
the right to write as he pleases, for that right belongs only to the 
prophets who have faithfully recorded the things of the past under 
the inspiration of God, as well as the events of their own time. 
For this reason we do not possess thousands of writings, con- 
tradicting and denying each other, but only twenty-two books, 
which record that which has happened since the beginning of the 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 287 


world, and are rightly considered to be of divine origin”; namely, 
the five books of Moses, thirteen books of Prophets, embracing 
the period from the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, and four 
books of Psalms and Proverbs. 

“From the time of Artaxerxes to the present day, to be sure, 
everything is also recorded, but it is not so trustworthy... . 
The high respect that we have for our scriptures is shown by the 
fact that for a long time no one has dared add anything or sub- 
tract anything, or alter anything.” 

No doubt this was the case in the days of Josephus. As it 
became more difficult to alter the existing law as set down in the 
literature enumerated above, the innovators were forced more 
and more to resort to an mterpretation of the law in order to 
adapt it to the new conditions. The sacred writings of the Jews 
were well suited for this practice, since they were not a unified 
whole but constituted the literary precipitations of the most varied 
periods and social conditions. They embraced legends of the 
primitive Bedouin period, as well as the highly cultured metro- 
politan wisdom of Babylon, the whole having been edited under 
priestly editorship in the post-Babylonian period, an editorship 
that was often extremely crude and tactless, permitting outright 
contradictions to pass unquestioned. A body of “law” of this 
kind would permit anything to be proved, if the manipulator 
possessed the necessary acuteness and the necessary power of 
memory to learn all the passages of the law by heart and keep 
them constantly at the tip of his tongue, and such indeed was the 
nature of the rabbinical wisdom. They did not make it their task 
to study life, but to imbue their scholars with a precise knowledge 
of the sacred scriptures, to mobilize to the highest degree their 
powers of repartee and subtlety in the interpretation of these 
writings. Of course, they remained unconsciously under the in- 
fluence of the life that was surging about them, but the further 
the development of the pedantic rabbinical wisdom progressed, 
the more it ceased to be a means of understanding life, and thus 
of mastering life; it became, on the one hand, the art of out- 
witting all comers, including God himself, by a nimble juristic 
pettifogging, a superficial cleverness, and, on the other hand, the 


288 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


art of consoling and edifying oneself in any situation of life by 
means of a pious quotation. It has made no contribution to our 
knowledge of the world; in fact, its ignorance of the world was 
constantly increasing. This became fully apparent in the strug- 
gles which finally brought about the destruction of Jerusalem. 

The wise and sophisticated Sadducees were well acquainted 
with the alignment of power in their day. They knew that it was 
impossible to offer serious resistance to the Romans. The Phari- 
sees, on the other hand, tried all the more vigorously to shake 
off the Roman yoke, the more heavily the latter weighed down 
upon Judea and drove the people to despair. The Maccabzan 
insurrection had given a splendid example of how a people should 
and could defend its liberties against a tyrant. 

The hopes for the coming of the Messiah, which had given 
strong support to that insurrection, and which in turn had been 
much strengthened by its success, became stronger with the grow- 
ing desire to shake off the Roman yoke. To be sure, the Romans 
were more formidable opponents than the decaying Syrian Em- 
pire, and the confidence in the ability of the nations to act for 
themselves had decreased throughout the ancient world since the 
days of the Maccabzans. What were called civil wars were in 
reality the struggles of certain successful generals to achieve world 
power. Thus the conception of the Messiah was no longer the 
conception of a Jewish people liberating itself, but that of a 
powerful hero, full of miraculous energy, sent out by God to 
rescue and redeem the tormented nation of the chosen and saintly 
from their trials and tribulations. 

Even the most enthusiastic Pharisees did not consider it pos- 
sible to defeat their oppressors without the aid of such a miracu- 
lous general. But they did not build their hopes on him alone. 
They probably pointed to the constant increase in the numbers 
of their adherents in the Empire, particularly among the neigh- 
boring peoples, to their numerical strength in Alexandria, Baby- 
lonia, Damascus, and Antioch. Would not the latter come to the 
aid of their oppressed motherland if it should rebel? And if a 
single city, like Rome, had succeeded in conquering world power, 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 289 


why should the great and proud Jerusalem not be able to do the 
same? 

The basis of the Revelation of St. John is a Jewish propaganda 
document after the fashion of the Book of Daniel. It was prob- 
ably written in the time when Vespasian, and later Titus, were 
besieging Jerusalem. The Revelation prophesied a duel between 
Rome and Jerusalem. Behold Rome, the “woman sitting upon 
seven hills’, “Babylon (i.e., Rome), the great, the mother of 
harlots and abominations of the earth’’, “with whom the kings of 
the earth have committed fornication”, and “the merchants of 
the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” 
(xvii and xviii). This city will fall, judgment will be pronounced 
over it, ‘and the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn 
over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more’’, its 
place will be taken by the holy city of Jerusalem, and “the nations 
of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings 
of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it” (xxi, 24). 
As a matter of fact, Jerusalem was a city that might yet appear 
in the minds of simple-minded persons, unacquainted with the 
power of Rome, as a dangerous rival to the mistress of the 
world on the Tiber. 

Josephus reports that the priests had once counted the number 
of persons found in Jerusalem on the occasion of the Easter 
Festival. ‘“The priests counted 256,500 Easter lambs. But there 
were not less than ten persons at table feasting on each lamb. 
But sometimes there were as many as twenty such persons to a 
single lamb. But if we count ten persons only to each lamb, we 
shall arrive at the figure of 2,700,000 persons,”’ not counting the 
impure and the unbelievers, who were not permitted to take part 
in the Easter Festival.” 

Although Josephus here refers to an actual count, his infor- 
mation seems nevertheless to be incredible, even if we assume 
that these 2,700,000 persons included numerous country people 
from the surrounding districts, who did not require either food- 
stuffs or shelter in Jerusalem. Large consignments of foodstuffs 
from great distances were at that time possible only by means 


82 Jewish War, vi, 9, 3. 


290 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


of ships. The great cities of that day all lay on navigable 
rivers or on the seacoast. But there was no possibility of any 
transportation reaching Jerusalem by water, since both the sea 
and the River Jordan were far away, and the latter, besides, is 
not navigable. Such immense numbers of people could not even 
have been provided with sufficient drinking water in Jerusalem. 
We know that the city depended in part on supplies of rainwater 
kept in cisterns. 

Similarly, it is impossible to believe Josephus’ statement found 
in the same passage, that 1,100,000 Jews perished in Jerusalem 
during the siege preceding the destruction of the city. 

Tacitus gives a far smaller number.’* The besieged population, 
including all ages and both sexes, amounted, according to him, to 
600,000. As there were many among the besieged who did not 
ordinarily live in the city, it may perhaps be reasonable to assign 
about one-half of the above figure as its usual population during 
the few decades immediately preceding its destruction. Even if 
we take only one-third of this figure of 600,000, the population 
is a rather large one for a city of that time. But Josephus’ 
figures show how this number was inflated in the imagination of 
the Jewish people. 

But, however great and strong Jerusalem might have been, it 
had no possibility of obtaining a victory without assistance from 
the outside, and the Jews were counting on such assistance; but 
they forgot that the Jewish population outside of Palestine was 
a purely urban population; in fact, a population of large cities, 
and furthermore constituting a minority everywhere. But at that 
time, as well as in later periods, only the peasant was capable 
of enduring lengthy military service. The masses in the large 
cities, consisting of tradesmen, workers in domestic industries, 
and a Lumpenproletariat, could not form an army that could hold 
its own in the open field against trained troops. There is no 
doubt that at the time of the last great insurrection of Jerusalem 
there were also Jewish disturbances outside of Palestine, but they 
nowhere attained the proportions of a real aid to Jerusalem. 

Unless a Messiah would really operate miracles, all Jewish 


53 Histories, V. 13. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 291 


insurrections seemed hopeless. The more rebellious the situation 
in Judea, the more fervently was the hope of the Messiah cher- 
ished in Pharisaic circles. Of course the Sadducees were rather 
skeptical of these hopes, as well as of the doctrine of the resur- 
rection, which was intimately connected with the hopes of a com- 
ing Messiah. 

As in all the rest of their mythology, the notions of the Israel- 
ites concerning the condition of man after death had originally 
contained nothing that would have distinguished them from other 
nations on the same level of culture. The fact that deceased 
persons would appear in dreams led to the assumption that the 
deceased still continued to live a personal life, but it was an in- 
corporeal, shadow-like existence. Possibly it was the burial of 
the deceased in a dark vault which gave rise to the view that 
this shadowy existence was connected with a gloomy subterranean 
location. And a healthy love of life and life’s pleasures, finally, 
could not imagine that the end of life would not also be the end 
of all joy and pleasure, that the shadowy existence of the dead 

could be anything but a joyless and gloomy one. 

We find these views originally among the ancient Israelites, as 
well as, for example, among the ancient Greeks. The latters’ 
Hades corresponded to the Israelites’ Sheol, a place of the most 
intense darkness, far down in the earth, which was well guarded 
so that those who had died and descended into it could never 
again return. If the shade of Achilles laments in Homer the fact 
that a living day-worker is better off than a dead prince, the 
preacher Solomon (in Ecclesiastes, a document written in the 
time of the Maccabzans) still declares: “A living dog is better 
than a dead lion,” and continues, “The dead know not anything, 
neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them 
is forgotten, also their love and their hatred, and their envy is 
now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in 
anything that is done under the sun.” 

The dead therefore may not expect any reward; whether they 
were godless or righteous, they are all visited with the same fate 
in the lower world. Joy and pleasure may be had only in life. 

“For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope. Go 


Pde Pa FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a 
merry heart for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments 
be always white and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully 
with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy 
vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of 
thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor 
which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, 
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” 
(Ecclesiastes ix, 4-10.) 

Here we still have a purely “Hellenic” joy of life, but also a 
purely “pagan” view of death. Such were the ancient Jewish 
conceptions, as preserved by the Sadducees. Conceptions of an 
opposite kind were already arising at the time of Ecclesiastes 
(the “‘Preacher’’). 

This joy of life was fully in accord with the popular. feeling 
in the period of a healthy, prosperous peasantry. After their 
downfall, the aristocracy might still find joy in reality, pleasure 
in life, might even raise these joys to the pitch of voluptuousness, 
but the lower classes were losing them more and more, as their 
existence became more wretched. However, they had not de- 
scended so far as to doubt every possibility of improving the 
actual conditions. The more miserable the latter became, the 
more ardently did they cherish the hope of revolution, which 
would provide them with a better life and thus with more of its 
joy. The Messiah meant revolution, which of course came to be 
based more and more on superhuman powers, on miracles, as the 
actual alignment of forces gradually shifted to the disadvantage 
of the exploited and tormented masses. As the belief in miracles 
and the faith in the miraculous power of the Messiah who was 
to come increased, the mass of the sufferings and sacrifices de- 
manded by the struggle against oppression increased in the same 
measure, also the number of martyrs who succumbed in this con- 
flict. Was it possible to believe that they all had hoped and 
waited in vain, that the splendid life which the victory of the 
Messiah would bring to his chosen should be cut off from his 
most devoted and valorous champions? Should they who had 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 293 


renounced all pleasure in the cause of the saints and the elect, 
who had even sacrificed life itself, receive no reward for these 
sacrifices? Should they lead a gloomy, shadowy existence in 
Sheol, while their victorious comrades in Jerusalem ruled the 
world and enjoyed all its pleasures? If the Messiah was credited 
with sufficient strength to conquer Rome, he could probably also 
conquer death; awakenings from the dead were then not con- 
sidered impossible. 

Thus the view gradually took shape that the champions of 
Judaism who had fallen in battle would rise from their graves 
with full bodily vigor, and would begin a new life of pleasure and 
enjoyment. This was not a belief in the immortality of the soul, 
but in a reanimation of the body, which was to enjoy very real 
pleasures in the victorious city of Jerusalem. An extensive con- 
sumption of wine was a prominent feature in these hopes. But 
the pleasures of love were also not forgotten. Josephus tells us 
of a eunuch of Herod, whom the Pharisees won to their cause by 
promising him that the Messiah who was to come would give him 
the power to practice cohabitation and beget children.™* 

But if the Messiah was to be strong enough to reward his 
faithful it was natural also to assign him a similar power in mat- 
ters of punishment. As a matter of fact, while the thought that 
the martyrs would remain unrewarded was intolerable, it was 
just as intolerable for those battling for Judaism to believe that 
all their persecutors who died happy were now exempt from pun- 
ishment, since they were leading the same unfeeling existence in 
the underworld as were the shades of the righteous. Therefore 
the bodies of these wicked persons were also to be awakened 
by the Messiah and assigned to frightful torment. 

The original conception by no means involved a reawakening 
of all the dead. The resurrection was to represent the final out- 
come of the struggle for the independence and the world dominion 
of Jerusalem, and was therefore only concerned with those dead 
who had fought on either side in this conflict. Thus we read in 
the Book of Daniel concerning the day of Judaism’s victory: 

“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 


54 Antiquities, xvii, 2, 4. 


294 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and ever- 
lasting contempt”? (xii, 2). 

The so-called Revelation of St. John, as we have already ob- 
served, is a work belonging to the same class. In the Christian 
version that has been handed down, Revelation distinguishes 
between two resurrections. The first does not apply to all men, 
but only to the martyrs, in our traditional version, of course to 
the Christian martyrs, who shall be awakened to a thousand years 
of life in this world: ‘‘The souls of them that were beheaded for 
the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not 
worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his 
mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and 
reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead 
lived not again until the thousand years were finished”’ (xx, 4, 5). 

The belief in resurrection was a doctrine of battle. Born from 
the fanaticism of a long and savage struggle with an enemy of 
superior power, and incomprehensible, except on this basis, this 
belief was quite capable of continuing to cherish and give strength 
to such fanaticism. 

But in the non-Jewish world this belief encountered the wish 
of man for immortality, entirely independent of the demands of 
battle, the product rather of fatigue and resignation. It is to 
this that the philosophical conceptions of the immortality of the 
soul found in the Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines owe their 
wide dissemination. But the hope of resurrection preached by 
the Pharisees had a far more immediate and vivid effect on the 
masses of men in those days, who had faith in miracles, but no 
training in abstract thought. They gladly accepted this hope, 
which they translated from the Jewish environment into their own 
quite different language. 

Judaism owed the success of its propaganda up to the time of 
the destruction of Jerusalem in large measure to the belief in the 
resurrection. But the destruction of this city destroyed the 
majority of those who had firmly expected the Messiah to come 
at an early date, while it shook the foundations of the faith in 
his early approach, among the other Jews. 

The messianic expectation ceased to be a motive power of 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 295 


practical politics in Judaism; it became a pious wish and a melan- 
choly longing. Simultaneously, however, the Pharisaic belief in 
the resurrection lost its foothold in Jewish thought. This belief, 
together with the belief in the Messiah, was maintained only in 
the Christian congregation, which thus took over from the Phar- 
isees a portion of their best propaganda. 

But the Christian congregation drew even more energy from 
the proletarian elements in Judaism than from bourgeois democ- 
racy, if we may so term it. 


h. The Zealots 


The Pharisees were the representatives of the mass of the people 
as opposed to the priestly aristocracy. But these masses resem- 
bled the “Third Estate” in France before the revolution of 1789 
in that they also were composed of very different elements with 
very different interests, with varying degrees of fighting spirit and 
fighting ability. 

This is true even of the Jews outside of Palestine. While these 
Jews constituted an exclusively urban population, living chiefly 
by trade and financial transactions, tax-farming and the like, it 
would nevertheless be a serious mistake to assume that they con- 
sisted only of rich merchants and bankers. We have already 
pointed out that trade is far more insecure than the occupation 
of the peasant or the artisan. This was even more the case then 
than now, for navigation was less perfected and piracy flourished 
on a large scale. And how many persons were ruined by the 
civil wars! 

But there must have been many Jews who had been rich and 
were now poor, and many who had never succeeded in getting 
rich. While trade was the occupation that afforded them the 
best prospects under the given conditions, this does not mean 
that every individual had the available capital necessary for trade 
on a large scale. The trade practiced by most of the Jews must 
have remained a petty peddling or shopkeeping. 

In addition, they probably practised such handicrafts as did 
not require great skill or exceptionally good taste. Where large 
numbers of Jews were living together, the peculiarities of their 


296 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


manners and customs alone must have produced a demand for 
many artisans of their own faith. When we read that there were 
a million Jews among the eight million inhabitants of Egypt, it 
is impossible to assume that all these Jews lived by trade; and 
we actually find mention of Jewish industries in Alexandria as . 
well as Jewish artisans in other cities. 

In many cities, particularly in Rome, the Jews must have been 
rather fully represented among the slaves also, and therefore 
among the freedmen. Their repeated unsuccessful struggles and 
attempted insurrections furnished an ever-renewed supply of fresh 
prisoners of war, who were sold into slavery. 

From all these classes, some of whom were already quite close 
to the proletariat, there was recruited a sediment of Lumpen- 
proletariat, which at some points became very numerous. Thus, 
for example, the Jewish beggars seem to have attracted special 
attention among the Roman proletarians. Martial gives us a 
description of the life of the streets in the capital: together with 
the artisans working in the street, the processions of the priests, 
the jugglers and peddlers, he also mentions the Jewish boy sent 
out by his mother to beg. Juvenal in his Third Satire speaks 
of the Grove of Egeria, ‘now leased to the Jews, whose entire 
household utensils consist of a basket and a bundle of hay. For 
every tree is now forced to yield us a profit. The forest is now 
owned by beggars, the muses have been driven out.” © 

Of course this is an evidence from the period after the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, from the reign of Domitian, who had driven 
the Jews out of Rome and permitted them to sojourn in this grove 
on payment of a head tax. At any rate, it indicates the presence 
of a large number of Jewish beggars in Rome. 

The schnorrer was already a noteworthy phenomenon in 
Judaism at that early day. 

The Lumpenproletariat was, of course, a very unstable element. 

The principal goal of the pilgrimages of the Jewish beggars 
was surely Jerusalem. There they felt themselves at home, there 
they had no reason to fear that they would be derided or mal- 
treated by a hostile or at least unsympathetic population. There 


55 Juvenal, Satires, iii, 13-16. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 297 


the wealthy pilgrims from the most varied parts of the world 
assembled in great masses; there their religious impulses and 
simultaneously also their generosity reached the largest propor- 
tions. 

In the time of Christ there was not a single large city that did 
not possess a numerous Lumpenproletariat. But after Rome, 
Jerusalem probably contained the largest proletariat of this de- 
scription, at least relatively; for in both cities this rabble was 
recruited from the whole empire. The artisans of the period were 
as yet in close contact with this proletariat; they were as a rule 
merely domestic workers, and even today domestic workers are 
counted among the proletarians. It was not an unusual thing 
for them to consort with beggars and burden-bearers. 

Wherever such penniless classes of the population congregated 
in great numbers, they became particularly aggressive. Unlike 
the possessing classes, they have nothing to lose; their social posi- 
tion is intolerable, and they have nothing to gain by waiting. 
They are emboldened by the consciousness of number. Further- 
more, the military power could not easily employ its strength in 
the narrow and winding streets of those days. Little as the city 
proletarians were fitted for military service in the open field, un- 
satisfactory as their conduct usually was in such situations, they 
nevertheless were equal to the requirements of street battle. 
Events both in Alexandria and Jerusalem have shown the correct- 
ness of this observation. 

In Jerusalem, this proletariat was inspired with quite a different 
fighting spirit from that of the possessing and intellectual classes 
which furnished the recruits of the Pharisees. Of course, in 
normal times the proletarians consented to be led by the Phari- 
sees, but as the oppositions between Jerusalem and Rome were 
sharpened, as the decisive moment came nearer and nearer, the 
Pharisees became more and more cautious and timid, and thus 
frequently came into conflict with the advancing proletarians. 

The latter found a powerful support in the country population 
of Galilee. The petty peasants and shepherds were being ex- 
ploited to the utmost by the pressure of taxation and usury, and 
were thrown into servitude or expropriated, as they were every- 


298 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


where in the Empire. Some of them probably came to Jerusalem, 
increasing the strength of the proletariat there. But as in other 
regions of the Empire, the more energetic elements among those 
expropriated and driven to desperation resorted to violent insur- 
rection, to banditry. The proximity of the desert, still a home 
for Bedouin customs and habits, facilitated this struggle by offer- 
ing numerous hiding places known only to those acquainted with 
the country. And Galilee itself, with its irregular soil and many 
caves, offered conditions that were not less favorable to the trade 
of the bandit. The flag under which these robbers fought was 
the hope in the Messiah. Just as today, in Russia, the revolution 
is taken as a pretext by every robber in executing his “expropria- 
tions”, and as, on the other hand, the desire to advance the revo- 
lution makes a bandit of many a simple-minded, aggressive 
revolutionary,”° so also was the case in Galilee. Bandit chieftains 
declared themselves to be the Messiah or at least his forerunner, 
and enthusiasts who felt themselves called to be the prophet or 
the Messiah, became bandit chieftains. 

The bandits of Galilee and the proletarians of Jerusalem were 
in close codperation with each other, supporting each other, and 
finally constituting a common party opposed to the Pharisees, 
namely the party of the Zealots, or those full of zeal. The con- 
trast between these two groups shows many points of similarity 
with the contrast between the Girondists and the Jacobins. 

The connection between the proletarians of Jerusalem and the 
armed bands of Galilee, and their eagerness for action, become 
particularly apparent in the time of Christ. 

During Herod’s last illness (4 B.c.), the people of Jerusalem 
already rebelled in mighty tumult against the innovations Herod 
had undertaken; above all, their fury was aroused by a golden 
eagle which Herod had caused to be set on the roof of his temple. 
This riot was put down by force of arms. But after Herod’s 
death the people again rose at Easter, and this time with such 
energy that it was only after considerable bloodshed that the 
troops of Archelaus, Herod’s son, succeeded in putting down the 
insurrection; 3,000 Jews were slain. But even this did not dis- 


56 The reader will recall that Kautsky wrote these words in 1908.— TRANSLATOR. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 299 


courage the aggressive spirit of the masses in Jerusalem. When 
Archelaus traveled to Rome in order to have himself declared 
king, the people again rebelled, but now the Romans intervened. 
Varus, who later fell in battle against the Cherusci, was then gov- 
ernor of Syria. He hastened to Jerusalem, put down the re- 
bellion, and then returned to Antioch, leaving a legion behind in 
Jerusalem in charge of the Procurator Sabinus. The latter, re- 
lying upon his military strength, oppressed the Jews to the utmost 
and plundered and robbed as much as he could. This was the 
last straw. At Pentecost many persons gathered in Jerusalem, 
including a large number of Galileans. They were strong enough 
to encircle and besiege the Roman legion, together with the mer- 
cenaries recruited by Herod, who continued to operate after his 
death. The Romans attempted to make sorties in vain, although 
many Jews were killed in these efforts. The besiegers did not 
recede, and succeeded even in enticing some of Herod’s troops to 
join their number. 

Meanwhile rebellion broke out in the country districts. The 
brigands of Galilee now found many adherents and formed regu- 
lar armies. Their leaders had themselves proclaimed kings of 
the Jews, in other words Messiahs. Among them, Judas was 
particularly prominent, whose father Ezechias had already been 
a famous robber and been executed as such (47 B.c.). In 
Perea a former slave of Herod, Simon, gathered another band, 
while a third was commanded by the shepherd Athronges. 

The Romans had great difficulty in putting down this insur- 
rection, which made it necessary for Varus to come with two 
legions and numerous auxiliary forces to the aid of those be- 
sieged in Jerusalem. There began an unspeakable slaughtering 
and plundering; two thousand of those captured were crucified, 
many others sold into slavery. 

This was at the time commonly assigned to the birth of Christ. 

There now was peace for a few years, but only a few years. 
In 6 A.D., Judea was placed directly under Roman rule. The 
first measure taken by the Romans was the recording of a cen- 
sus, for the purpose of assessing taxes. This resulted in a new 
attempt at insurrection by Judas, the Galilean, probably the same 


300 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Judas who had been so prominent in the insurrection ten years 
before. He joined forces with the Pharisee Sadduk, who was 
instructed to arouse the people of Jerusalem. This attempt had 
no important results, but it led to a breach between the lower 
classes of the population and the rebellious Galileans on the one 
hand, and the Pharisees on the other. In the insurrection of 
4 B.c. they had all still acted together. Now the Pharisees felt 
they had enough, and refused to work with the others. The party 
of Zealots was therefore formed in opposition to them. From 
this time on the fires of insurrection were never completely ex- 
tinguished in Judea and Galilee until the destruction of Jeru- 
salem. Josephus describes this situation from his own Pharisaic 
point of view: 

“Thereupon Judas, a Gaulanite, from the city of Gamala, with 
the aid of Sadduk, a Pharisee, aroused the people to rebellion 

by making them believe that they would become slaves if they 
- should submit to the census of their property, and that they 
ought to defend their liberties. They pointed out that they would 
thus not only preserve their possessions, but would attain a far 
greater good fortune, for their boldness would bring them great 
honor and fame. God would not aid them in this ambition unless 
they adopted energetic measures and shunned no efforts to carry 
them out. The people were glad to hear this and became thor- 
oughly inspired to bold deeds. 

“It is impossible to dwell too long on the amount of evil these 
two men produced among the people. There was no misfortune 
which was not due to them. ‘They fomented one war after the 
other. They were constantly resorting to violence; anyone who 
expressed himself against such violence had to pay for it with his 
life. Bandits harried the land. The most distinguished persons 
were killed allegedly in order that liberty might be preserved. In 
reality it was done for greed and owing to the desire to rob their 
possessions. ‘Thereupon many uprisings and general bloodshed 
ensued, since on the one hand the people of the country were 
themselves warring against each other, each party seeking to over- 
throw the other, while on the other hand external foes were cut- 
ting them down. Finally, famine was added to all this, which 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 301 


removed all barriers to destruction and plunged the cities into 
extreme wretchedness, until finally the Temple of God was re- 
duced to ashes by the enemies. Thus their innovations and altera- 
tions of old habits redounded to the destruction of the rebels 
themselves. In this manner, Judas and Sadduk, who introduced 
a fourth doctrine and found many adherents, not only disturbed 
the state in their day, but also through this new doctrine, that 
had never been heard of before, gave rise to all the ills that came 
to pass later. . . . The young people who became attached to 
this doctrine have brought about our ruin.” (Antiquities, 
ae. bs 1.) 

At the end of the same chapter, Josephus speaks far more 
respectfully of the same Zealots whom he denounces so em- 
phatically at its opening. His words now are: 

“The fourth of these doctrines (the other three being those of 
the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes) was introduced by Judas, 
the Galilean. His adherents agreed in all respects with the 
Pharisees, except that they showed a stubborn love for liberty, 
and declared that God alone should be recognized as Lord and 
prince. They prefer to suffer the most terrible tortures, and to 
see their own friends and relatives tortured, rather than call any 
human being their master. But I shall not dwell on this subject 
at length, because it is too well known what obstinacy they have 
shown in these things. I am not afraid that I shall not be be- 
lieved, but rather that I shall not find words in order to express 
sufficiently the heroism and steadfastness with which they bear 
the worst tortures. ‘This madness infected the entire people as 
a contagious disease, when the governor Gessius Florus (64-66 
A.D.) abused his authority over them to such an extent as to 
drive them in desperation to secede from the Romans.” 

As the Roman yoke became more oppressive and the despera- 
tion of the Jewish masses increased, they escaped more and more 
from the influence of the Pharisees and were attracted by Zealot- 
ism, while the latter was simultaneously developing by-products 
of a peculiar kind. 

One of these was that of rapturous ecstasy. Knowledge was 


302 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


not the strong point of the ancient proletarian, not even a desire 
for knowledge. Dependent on social forces more than any other 
stratum of the population, forces that he did not understand, that 
seemed uncanny to him; driven to desperation more than any 
other class, grasping at every straw, he was particularly inclined 
to believe in miracles; the messianic prophecy took a particu- 
larly strong hold on him, and he was left more than any other 
class in complete ignorance of all actual conditions, a condition 
in which he expected the impossible would happen. 

Every madman that had proclaimed himself Messiah and prom- 
ised to liberate the people through the miracles he would per- 
form, found numerous adherents. One such was the Prophet 
Theudas, under the governorship of Fadus (beginning in 44 
A.D.), who led a host with him to the Jordan, where they were 
scattered by Fadus’ cavalry. Theudas himself was captured and 
beheaded. 

Under the Procurator Felix (52-60 A.D.), these ecstatic prac- 
tices became even more prevalent: 

“There was a band of evil men, who did not indeed murder, 
but who had godless thoughts, and who made the city (Jeru- 
salem) restless and insecure as much as murderers themselves 
could have done. For they were seductive deceivers, who under 
the pretext of divine revelation preached innovations of every 
sort, and incited the people to insurrection. ‘They enticed them 
into the desert and pretended that God would permit them to 
behold a token of liberty. As Felix assumed this to be the be- 
ginning of the rebellion, he sent soldiers against them, cavalry as 
well as infantry, and had a great number slain.” 

“Still greater misfortune was brought upon the Jews by a false 
prophet from Egypt (i.e., an Egyptian Jew, K.). He was a sor- 
cerer and succeeded in having himself accepted as a prophet be- 
cause of his witchcraft. He misled about thirty thousand persons, 
who became his adherents; he led them out of the desert to the 
so-called Mount of Olives, in order to penetrate into Jerusalem 
from that point, overpowering the Roman garrison, and conquer- 
ing the authority over the people. As soon as Felix obtained 
news of his plan, he set out to meet him, together with the Roman 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 303 


soldiers, and all the people that were ready to fight for the com- 
mon weal, and gave battle to him. The Egyptian escaped to- 
gether with a few others. Most of them were captured, the rest 
hid in the country. 

“Hardly had this rebellion been put down when again, as if 
from a diseased and infected body, a new pestilence broke forth. 
A few wizards and murderers joined forces and gained many ad- 
herents. They summoned everyone to seize his liberty, and 
threatened with death those that would henceforth continue to be 
subject and obedient to the Roman authority, saying of them: 
One must free, even against their wills, those that were willing 
to bow their heads under the yoke of servitude. 

“They passed through the entire Jewish land, plundered the 
houses of the rich, slaying them that dwelled therein, set fire to 
the villages and harried the land so terribly that they were an 
oppression to the entire Jewish people, and this ruinous pestilence 
spread day by day.” *” 

Within Jerusalem open rebellion against the Roman military 
power was not an easy matter. Here the most embittered ene- 
mies of the ruling system resorted to assassination. Under Gov- 
ernor Felix, in whose governorship the robbers and prophets be- 
came more numerous, a Terrorist sect was also formed. As ex- 
plosive materials had then not yet been invented, the favorite 
weapon of the Terrorists was a curved dagger concealed under 
their cloaks; this dagger (sica) gave them their name (Sicarians). 

The desperate turmoil brought about by all these advocates of 
the cause of the people was only the inevitable answer to the 
shameless fury of their oppressors. Let the reader simply learn 
what Josephus, who witnessed all these things, tells concerning 
the actions of the last two governors who ruled over Judea before 
the destruction of Jerusalem: 

“Festus became governor (60-62). He made serious attempts 
to combat the robbers who plagued the Jewish land, seized and 
slew many of them. His successor Albinus (62-64) unfortu- 
nately did not follow his example. There was no crime and no 
vice too monstrous for him to commit. He not only embezzled 

57 Josephus, Jewish War, ii, 13, 4-6. 


304 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


public funds while administering the state, but even attacked the 
private property of his subjects, appropriating it to himself by 
force. He oppressed the people with large and unreasonable 
taxes. The robbers whom the authorities of the towns as well 
as his predecessors had thrown into prison were released by him 
on payment of a piece of money, and only those that could not 
pay were criminals and remained in prison. The audacity of the 
rebels at Jerusalem was thus increased. The rich were able to 
gain such great favor with Albinus by means of presents and 
gifts, that he closed his eyes to their gathering a retinue about 
them. But the masses of the people, who do not love peace, 
began to attach themselves to them, because Albinus favored 
them. Therefore each evildoer surrounded himself with a band 
in which he himself was prominent as the supreme rascal, who 
had all good citizens plundered and robbed by his mercenaries. 
Those robbed kept their silence, and those not yet robbed even 
flattered the hangman-like scoundrel, for fear of otherwise in- 
curring similar treatment. No man dared complain, for the 
oppression was too great. Thus the germ of the destruction of 
our city was planted. 

“Although Albinus carried on in a shameful and malicious 
manner, he was far outdone by his successor Gessius Florus 
(64-66), with the result that Albinus, in a comparison between 
the two, would seem to have been the better. For Albinus car- 
ried on his misdeeds secretly and was able to cloak everything 
under a fair appearance, but his successor did all publicly as if 
he would seek his fame by maltreating our people. He robbed, 
he plundered, he imposed penalties, and acted not as if he had 
been sent to be governor, but to be a hangman to torture the 
Jews. Where clemency was in place, he applied cruelty; besides, 
he was impudent and deceitful, and no man could have invented 
more devices to mislead the people than he. It was not sufficient 
for him to bleed private individuals and gain profit at their ex- 
pense. He plundered whole cities and ruined the entire nation. 
He omitted only to proclaim publicly that one might rob and steal 
as one liked provided only he obtained his share. Thus it came 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 305 


to pass that the whole land became desolate, since many left their 
native country and went to foreign parts.” °° 

Does this not sound like a report concerning the brutalities of 
Russian chinovniks? 

Finally the great insurrection came under Florus, in which the 
whole people rose with all its might against its tormentors. Jeru- 
salem rebelled when Florus proposed to plunder the Temple, in 
May, 66 A.p. Or rather, the lower classes in the population of 
Jerusalem rebelled. The majority of the wealthy, Pharisees as 
well as Sadducees, feared this rebellion and desired peace. The 
rebellion against the Romans also meant the beginning of civil 
war. ‘The war party was victorious; the peace party succumbed 
in street fights; and the Roman garrison in Jerusalem was forced 
to leave the city and was cut to pieces while doing so. 

So great was the fighting zeal of the insurgents, that they suc- 
ceeded in putting to flight a relief army of 30,000 men which ar- 
rived under the leadership of the Syrian Legate Cestius Gallus. 

In all Palestine and far beyond its limits, the Jews rose in re- 
bellion. The uprising of the Jews in Alexandria required the 
raising of all the military forces the Romans had in Egypt. 

Of course it was out of the question for the Jews to defeat 
Rome; they were too weak; their population was too exclusively 
urban in character. But they might nevertheless have succeeded 
in wresting a certain consideration for Judea from the Romans 
for a time at least, if the rebels had immediately and energetically 
taken the offensive, and pursued the advantages they had gained. 
Conditions would soon have become favorable to them. In the 
second year of the Jewish War, the soldiers in the western por- 
tion of the Empire rebelled against Nero; the combats between 
the various legions continued until after his death (June 9, 68 
A.D.); Vespasian, Commander-in-Chief of the army that was 
to repacify Judea, paid far more attention to events in the West, 
which involved the control of the Empire, than to the little local 
war into which he had been drawn. 

But the sole slight opportunity that offered itself to the rebels 
was neglected. The reader will recall that it was the lower classes 


58 Jewish War, ii, 14, I, 2. 


306 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that had declared war on the Romans and defeated the Jewish 
peace party. But the wealthy and the intellectuals still had 
enough power to gain control of the conduct of the war against 
the Romans, with the result that this war was not waged with a 
whole heart, with the object of defeating the enemy, but merely 
for the purpose of coming to terms with him. Of course, this 
upper class did not remain at the helm for long; the rebels finally 
noticed how lukewarmly their leaders fought, and the Zealots 
now succeeded in gaining control of the military authority. 

“The unfortunate course of events was ascribed by the 
fanatical people’s party—and rightly so—to the lack of energy 
displayed in the previous conduct of the war. The men of the 
people therefore put everything at stake in order to gain control 
of the situation themselves and drive out the former leaders. As 
the latter did not voluntarily relinquish their position, a terrible, 
bloody civil war ensued in Jerusalem in the winter of 67-68, with 
atrocities that may be paralleled only in the first French Revo- 
lution.” °° 

In fact, any observer of these events cannot escape drawing 
comparisons with the French Revolution. But while the Reign 
of Terror in France was used as a means of saving the Revo- 
lution, and enabling it to advance successfully against the armies 
of all Europe, such an outcome was precluded in advance, owing 
to the nature of the case, in Jerusalem. The Reign of Terror 
established by the lower classes came too late in Jerusalem to gain 
even a short respite for the Jewish State, for the latter’s days 
were numbered. The resort to terror resulted only in prolong- 
ing the conflict, increasing its sufferings, and aggravating the 
rage of the final victor to worse atrocities. But it did result in 
leaving to the world a monument of endurance, heroism, and 
devotion, which stands alone and is all the more impressive in the 
mire of universal cowardice and self-seeking of the times. 

Not the entire Jewish population of Jerusalem continued for 
three years, until September, 70 A.D., to fight the hopeless battle 
against the superior enemy in the bravest, most obstinate and 
most brilliant manner, covering every inch of ground with 


59 Schurer, Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes, vol. i, p. 617. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 307 


corpses, before it yielded, exhausted by famine and disease, and 
was consumed in the burning ruins. The priests, the scribes, 
the merchants, had for the most part found safety early in the 
siege. It was the petty artisans and shopkeepers as well as the 
proletarians of Jerusalem that became the heroes of their nation, 
together with the proletarianized peasants of Galilee who had 
cut their way through to Jerusalem. 

This was the atmosphere in which the Christian congregation 
originated. It does not at all present the smiling picture sketched 
for us by Renan in his Life of Jesus, when he describes its en- 
vironment; for Renan based his picture not on a contemplation 
of the social conditions of the time but on the picturesque im- 
pressions received by the modern tourist in Galilee. That is 
why Renan finds it possible to say in his novel concerning Jesus 
(the Life of Jesus), that this beautiful country in the time of 
Jesus “overflowed with abundance, joy and comfort,” so that 
“any history of the origin of Christianity must take the form of 
a lovely idyll.” 

Not more pleasant, I should say, than the lovely month of May 
in Paris in 1871. 


t. The Essenes 


But we must admit that in the midst of the terrible picture of 
woe and blood which is afforded by the history of Judea in the 
age of Christ, there is one phase which makes the impression of 
a peaceful ideal. It is the order of the Essenes or Esszans,°° 
which arose, according to Josephus, about the year 150 B.c. and 
continued in existence up to the destruction of Jerusalem, where- 
upon it disappears from history. 

Like the Zealots, the Essenes were of proletarian origin, but 
quite different in character. The Zealots developed no theory of 
society peculiar to them; they differed from the Pharisees not 
by the end they pursued, but by their means, by the ruthlessness 
and violence with which they fought to attain this end. Once 


60 Josephus writes “Essenes,” Philo “Essxans.” The word is a Grecization 
of the Syrian Khasi (Hebrew Khasid), “pious.” The plural of the word has 
two forms: Khasen, Khasuya, 


308 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the goal was attained, once Jerusalem had taken Rome’s place as 
mistress of the world, receiving all the treasures now falling to 
Rome, all distress would cease for all classes. Nationalism 
seemed even to the proletarians to make Socialism unnecessary. 
The proletarian character expressed itself in the Zealots only 
in the energy and fanaticism of their patriotism. 

But not all the proletarians were willing to wait for the Mes- 
siah to bring about the new Jerusalem that would rule the world. 
Many sought to improve their situation at once, and as politics 
did not seem to offer any immediate remedy, they set about the 
question of an economic organization. Probably the Essenes 
owed their origin to this attitude; tradition tells us nothing on 
the subject. 

But the nature of their organization is clear; it was an out- 
spoken form of communism. At the time of Josephus there were 
four thousand Essenes, living in houses of the order in various 
villages and country towns of Judea. 

“There they live together,” Philo says of them, “organized 
into corporations, free unions, boarding clubs (Kata @dacouc, 
eTaiplac Kal ouccitia moioupevol), and are regularly occupied in 
various tasks for the community. 

“For none of them wishes to have any property of his own, 
either a house, or a slave, or land, or herds, or anything else pro- 
ductive of wealth. But rather, by joining together everything 
without exception, they all have a common profit from it. 

“The money which they acquire by various kinds of labor, they 
entrust to an elected trustee, who receives it and buys with it that 
which is necessary, providing them with abundant food and 
everything required for living.” 

We might therefore assume that everyone was producing for 
himself or working for wages. 

Josephus describes their life as follows: 

“Thereupon (after morning prayer) they are dismissed by their 
overseers and each proceeds to his work which he has learned, 
and after all have worked diligently to the fifth hour (counting 
from sunrise, therefore, to 11 A.M.), they gather in a certain 
place, gird themselves with linen cloths, and wash their bodies 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 309 


with cold water. After this cleansing they enter their dining- 
hall, to which none is admitted who is not of their sect. They 
enter it as clean and pure as if it werea temple. After they have 
been seated in silence, the baker comes and places every man’s 
bread before him, and the cook likewise places before each a bowl 
of food; then the priest comes and blesses their food. And it is 
not permitted to touch the food until prayer is over. After the 
meal has been eaten, they similarly give thanks, thus having 
praised God both at the beginning and at the conclusion of their 
meal as the giver of all sustenance. Thereupon they again lay 
aside their garments, as a sacred robe, and again go about their 
work until evening. They partake of their supper just as they 
did of their dinner, and if there are guests (probably members 
of the order from other towns, for outsiders were not admitted 
to the dining-hall, K.), they permit the latter to sit at table with 
them. There is never shouting nor any disturbance to dese- 
crate the house, and if they talk to each other, one speaks after 
the other, not all at once, so that persons outside of their house 
regard the quiet pervading the building as an awe-inspiring mys- 
tery. The cause for their silent life is their constant moderation; 
they neither eat nor drink more than is required for the preser- 
vation of life. 

“As a rule they perform no labor except under the instructions 
of their overseers, but they may give free expression to their feel- 
ings of compassion and charity; whenever distress requires it, 
each may give aid to those that need it and deserve it, and also 
give food to the poor. But they may not give anything to friends 
and relatives without previously notifying their overseer or 
trustee.” 

Communism among them was pushed to the utmost degree, 
extending even to matters of clothing. Philo informs us: 

“Not only their food, but also their clothing is common to all. 
There are thick cloaks for winter time, and light raiment for 
summer time, each being permitted to use them at his discretion. 
For what is the possession of one, belongs to all, while the pos- 
session of all belongs to everyone.” 

They disapproved of slavery. Agriculture was their principal 


310 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


occupation, but they also worked as artisans. They forbade only 
the production of articles of luxury and tools of war, as well as 
all commerce. 

The basis of their entire communistic system was a com- 
munity of consumption, not of social production. ‘To be sure, 
even the latter is suggested, but we also read of tasks performed 
by the individual and yielding money to him, either in the form 
of wages, or as a return for the goods sold, but these are tasks 
performed outside the social organism. On the other hand, all 
members of the order have their dwelling and meals in common; 
it is this that serves chiefly to hold them together. This is a 
communism of the common household, which requires a giving up 
of the isolated household, of the isolated family, and therefore 
also of the individual marriage. 

As a matter of fact we find in all organizations based on a 
communism of consumption, on a common household, that they 
encounter difficulties owing to monogamy, and that they there- 
fore seek to abolish it. There are two methods by which this 
may be done—these represent the opposite poles in sexual rela- 
tions, which appear diametrically opposed to each other, namely, 
extreme chastity and extreme ‘“‘wickedness”. And yet these two 
methods are equally likely to be followed in communistic or- 
ganizations. From the time of the Essenes, in all the Christian 
communistic sects, down to the sectarian communistic colonies 
in the United States in our day, we may trace this tendency to 
reject marriage, and this inclination to favor either austere 
celibacy or a community of wives. 

This would be inconceivable if this communism and its mental 
superstructure were based on mere ideological considerations; but 
it is easy to explain on the basis of its economic conditions. 

The majority of the Essenes disapproved of touching a woman 
at all. 

“They despised marriage, but adopted strange children, if they 
were still young and might still be taught, keeping them as their 
own, and instructing them in their customs and manners. They 
do not wish to abolish or prohibit marriage and the propagation 
of man. But they say that one must be on one’s guard because 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 311 


of the unchastity of women, as no woman is satisfied with one 
man alone.” ‘Thus Josephus in the Eighth Chapter of the Sec- 
ond Book of his History of the Jewish War, from which we take 
the above quotations concerning the Essenes. In the Eighteenth 
Book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Chapter 1, he also says on 
this subject: 

“They take no wives and keep no slaves. They imagine that 
the latter is not just, and that the former gives rise to discord.” 

In both cases, Josephus assigns only practical considerations 
as the reason for the hostility to marriage, not an ascetic impulse; 
and Josephus knew them from his own observation; he had made 
common cause, in succession, with the Sadducees, the Essenes, 
and the Pharisees, finally remaining with the latter. 

Josephus is therefore best able to inform us as to the reason 
for the Essenes’ opposition to women, which does not mean that 
these considerations were necessarily the final reason for this 
opposition. We must always distinguish between the arguments 
advanced by man as the causes for his actions, and the psycho- 
logical motives that actually condition these actions. Few per- 
sons are clearly conscious of these motives. Our historians love 
to accept the arguments handed down to them as the true mo- 
tives for historical actions and conditions. They condemn a 
seeking for the true motives as an arbitrary “construction,” 7.e., 
they wish our historical knowledge to attain no higher levels than 
those achieved in the times from which their sources date. The 
entire vast body of material that has been accumulated since 
those times, enabling us to isolate the essential and typical ele- 
ments in the most varied historical phenomena from the non- 
essential and accidental elements, and to discover the true motives 
of men that lie behind their supposed motives—we are to regard 
all this material as non-existent! 

He who knows the history of communism will at once under- 
stand that it was not the nature of women, but the nature of the 
communistic household, that disgusted the Essenes with mar- 
riage. Where many males and females lived together in a com- 
mon household, temptations to adultery and to conjugal disagree- 
ments owing to jealousy were too many. Unless one would 


312 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


relinquish this sort of household, one was necessarily obliged to 
renounce either the dwelling together of men and women, or 
monogamy. Not all the Essenes did the former. Josephus re- 
ports in the Eighth Chapter of the Second Book of the Jewish 
War, which we have so often cited: 

“There is also another variety of Essenes, who completely 
resemble the former in their mode of life, their customs and 
regulations, but differ from them only in regard to marriage, for 
they say that those who refrain from conjugal cohabitation de- 
prive life of its most important function (yée0c); propagation 
must decrease constantly, and the human race rapidly die out, 
if all should think as they. These Essenes have the custom of 
trying out their wives for three years (Soxwadovtec). If after 
three purifications the women show that they are fit to bear chil- 
dren, the Essenes marry them. As soon as a woman is preg- 
nant, her husband will no longer sleep with her. The purpose 
of this practice is to show that they enter into marriage not for 
the pleasures of the flesh, but only in order to have children.” 

This passage is not entirely clear. At any rate it goes to show 
that these marriages of the Essenes were different from the com- 
mon marriages. The “trials” of the women seem capable of no 
other construction, however, than the assumption of a sort of 
community of wives. 

Of the ideological superstructure that arose on these social 
bases, one thought deserves particular mention, namely, that of 
lack of freedom of the will, which was maintained by the Essenes 
in opposition to the Sadducees, who believed in freedom of the 
will, and to the Pharisees, who took an intermediate position. 

“While the Pharisees maintain that everything proceeds in 
accordance with Fate, they nevertheless do not abolish man’s free 
will, but declare that it has pleased God to bring about a sort of 
mixture between the decision of Fate and that of men, who wish 
to do good or evil.” ® 

“The Essenes, on the other hand, ascribe everything to Fate. 
They believe nothing can befall man unless it has been ordained 
by Fate. But the Sadducees do not consider Fate at all. They 


61 Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, 1, 3. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 313 


say there is no such thing, and that it does not govern the des- 
tinies of men. They ascribe everything to man’s free will, with 
the result that he has himself to thank if good befalls him, while 
he must ascribe adverse events to his own folly.” © 

These different attitudes seem to be the result of philosophy 
alone. But the reader already knows that each of these tenden- 
cies represents a different class, and if we read history carefully, 
we shall find that the ruling classes are often inclined to accept 
the idea of freedom of the will, while the oppressed classes, on 
the other hand, more often favor the idea of an unfree will. 

And this is very easy to understand. ‘The ruling classes feel 
themselves free to act or refrain from action, as they please. This 
is the result not only of their position of power, but also of the 
small number of their members. The necessary operation of 
natural laws becomes apparent only in mass phenomena, in which 
the various deviations from the normal mutually counteract each 
other. The smaller the number of individuals under observa- 
tion, the greater the predominance of personal and accidental 
elements over universal and typical elements. In the case of a 
monarch, the latter seem to be entirely absent. 

Therefore the rulers do not find it difficult to consider them- 
selves as superior to social influences, which, so long as they had 
not been recognized, appear to men as mysterious powers, as Fate, 
Destiny. The ruling classes also feel themselves impelled to 
ascribe freedom of the will not only to themselves, but also to 
those ruled by them. The misery of the exploited man appears 
to them as due to his own fault; each of his transgressions appears 
as a base misdeed, arising merely from a personal joy in evil, 
and demanding severe punishment. 

The assumption of freedom of the will makes it easy for the 
ruling classes to discharge their functions as judges and guardians 
of the oppressed classes with a feeling of moral superiority and 
indignation which must surely serve to enhance their energy. 

But the great mass of the poor and oppressed must feel at 
every step that they are the slaves of circumstances, of Fate, the 
decisions of which may be inscrutable to them, but which at any 


62 Antiquities, xiii, 5, 9. 


314 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


rate is stronger than they. Their own bodies have been made to 
feel the absurdity of the proverb declaimed at them by the for- 
tunate ones: ‘Each man is the architect of his own fortune.” 
They try in vain to escape from the conditions that oppress them. 
They constantly feel the pressure of these conditions, and from 
their vast numbers they learn that it is not only the individual 
among them who fares thus, but that all of them are dragging 
the same chain. And they also appreciate quite well that not 
only their actions and the results of their actions, but that even 
their feelings and ideas and volitions are entirely dependent on 
the conditions surrounding them. 

It may seem amusing that the Pharisees because of their so- 
cially intermediate position simultaneously accepted freedom of 
the will and also the necessity of natural law. Yet, the great 
philosopher Kant did precisely the same thing two thousand 
years after their time. 

The rest of the ideological superstructure based on the Es- 
senian constitution of society does not require further treatment 
here, although the historian usually gives most of his attention 
to just this point. For these ideas give him an opportunity to 
institute profound investigations as to the origin of Essenism in 
Parseeism, or Buddhism, or Pythagoreanism, or in some other 
cism.”’ 

The question as to the true roots of Essenism cannot be solved 
thus. Social institutions within a nation always rise from its 
real needs, not through mere imitation of external models. There 
is no doubt we may learn from foreign countries, or from an- 
tiquity, but we accept from them only so much as can be used, 
so much as may accord with our own needs. Roman law, for exam- 
ple, found a ready welcome in Germany after the Renaissance 
for the sole reason that it admirably answered the requirements 
of certain powerful and rising classes, namely, the absolute mon- 
archy and the merchants. One naturally saves oneself the pains 
of inventing a new tool if a finished tool is ready to hand. But 
the fact that a tool is of foreign origin will not explain why an 
application is found for it; such an application can only be ex- 
plained by the actual needs among the nation itself. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 315 


Furthermore, all the influences that might have been exerted 
on Essenism by Parseeism, by Buddhism, or by Pythagoreanism 
are of very dubious nature. There is no evidence anywhere of 
a direct influence of any of these elements on the Essenes. And 
the similarities between them can be explained only by the fact 
that they all arose under approximately the same conditions, 
which in each of them exerted pressure in the direction of the 
same attempts at solution. 

The most reasonable of these connections is probably that be- 
tween the Pythagoreans and the Essenes. Even Josephus says 
(Antiquities, xv, 10, 4) that the Essenes had a mode of life that 
was quite similar to the Pythagorean. But we might well ask 
whether it was the Essenes that learned from the Pythagoreans 
or the Pythagoreans from them. Of course, Josephus’ claim 
(Polemic against Apion, i, 22) that Pythagoras himself had ac- 
cepted Jewish ideas and published them as his own is an exag- 
geration probably based on forgery, for the purpose of glorifying 
the Jews. As a matter of fact, we know hardly anything defi- 
nite about Pythagoras; only a long time after his death do we 
begin to have fairly plentiful data concerning him, and the latter 
become the more numerous and the more definite—also the more 
implausible—as the lapse of time since his death increases. We 
pointed out at the outset that Pythagoras fared as Jesus did; 
he became an ideal figure to whom all those qualities were 
ascribed that were demanded of a pattern of morality; he also 
became a wonder-worker and prophet, who gave evidence of his 
divine mission by the most extraordinary performances. Pre- 
cisely because nothing definite was known of him, one could 
ascribe to him whatever actions or words one thought best. Also, 
the regulation of life alleged to have been introduced by 
Pythagoras, which was very similar to that of the Essenes, with 
its community of goods, is probably of later origin, perhaps not 
much older than the Essenian. 

This Pythagoreanism probably had its origin in Alexandria.*° 


63 On this subject, as well as on the Pythagoreans in general, consult Zeller, 
Philosophic der Griechen, vols. i and iii. A translation in 2 vols. appeared in 
London in 1881.—TRANSLATOR. 


316 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Some contact with Judaism was very natural under the circum- 
stances; it is quite possible that Pythagorean views passed into 
Palestine. The opposite process is also possible. Finally, it is 
no less possible that both systems were drawing from a common 
source, from the practice of the Egyptians, for in Egypt the rather 
high stage of social evolution had come comparatively early to 
take the step of establishing monastic institutions. 

If the ancient culture of Egypt, and its protracted process 
of disintegration, had produced earlier than any other portions 
of the Roman Empire an aversion to the pleasures of life and to 
private property, and a desire to flee from the world, this desire 
could not anywhere be more conveniently carried out than in 
Egypt, where the desert began in close proximity with the seats 
of civilization. In any other part of the Empire, he who fled from 
the great city found private property even in the country, and 
this was the most oppressive of all the forms of private property, 
it was landed property; otherwise it was necessary for such a 
man to retire to the wilderness, many miles remote from civiliza- 
tion, which could be rendered habitable only by the most strenu- 
ous labor, and a form of labor for which the dweller in great 
cities was least fitted. 

In the Egyptian desert, as in all other deserts, there was no 
private property of the soil. Yet it was not hard to live in the 
desert. Its climate required no great expenditure for buildings, 
clothing, fuel, protection against the inclemency of the weather. 
And the desert was so close to the city that the hermit could at 
any time easily be supplied with the needs of life by his friends, 
in fact he might even secure such materials himself with the 
effort of an hour’s walk. 

Egypt therefore began at an early age to develop a sort of 
monk-like hermit system. Then Neo-Pythagoreanism arose in 
Alexandria, and finally, in the Fourth Century of our era, the 
Christian monastery originated in the same city. But the Alex- 
andrian Jews also developed a peculiar order of monks, that of 
the Therapeute. Philo’s book On the Life of Wisdom, in which 
he tells us about them, has been declared a forgery, but the sus- 
picion seems to be baseless in this case. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE Oly 


According to this report they renounced all possessions as does 
the sage, dividing them among their relatives and friends, de- 
serted their brothers, children, wives, friends, parents, their na- 
tive city, and found their true home in an association with others 
of like mind. These associations are found in many parts of 
Egypt, particularly near Alexandria. Here each of them lives by 
himself in a simple cell close to the cells of the others, but spends 
his time in meditative piety. Their nutrition is very simple, 
consisting of bread, salt and water. On the Sabbath all gather, 
men and women, in a general dining-hall, in which the sexes, how- 
ever, are separated by a partition, to sing and hear pious dis- 
courses. They condemn the eating of meat, the drinking of 
wine, and slavery, but we hear nothing of work in their system; 
they probably live on the alms of their friends and well-wishers. 

It is quite possible that Alexandrian Jews brought the notions 
of the Therapeute to Palestine, and thus exercised an influence 
on the Essenes, and yet the two are essentially different. The 
Therapeutz lived in contemplative idleness on the labor of oth- 
ers; the Essenes labored diligently and acquired enough not only 
to enable them to live on it, but even to give to the needy of their 
surplus. Both condemned private property, but the Therapeute 
had no idea of what could be done with the goods of this world. 
Labor was as hateful to them as enjoyment; they did without 
articles of production and consumption and distributed their pos- 
sessions to friends and relatives. The Essenes worked, for which 
they needed tools; therefore their members did not distribute 
their possessions to their friends, but collected them for the com- 
mon use. 

Working, they must also remain efficient, must take sufficient 
nourishment. Austere asceticism is impossible for those who 
work. 

The difference between the Therapeutze on the one hand— 
particularly the Neo-Pythagoreans—who for the most part merely 
babbled about asceticism and unworldliness, and a surrender of 
property, and the Essenes on the other hand, is indicative of 
the contrast between the Jews of Palestine and the rest of the 
civilization of ancient Rome at the time when Christianity arose. 


318 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


In Essenism we meet with the same vigor that we have encoun- 
tered in Zealotism, and which so greatly elevates the Jews of that 
era above the cowardly querulousness of the other civilized peo- 
ples, who fled enjoyment and temptation because they feared the 
struggle, even their communistic tendencies assuming a cowardly 
and ascetic character. 

The thing that made Essenism possible was the Jewish vitality, 
but not this alone; other factors are also responsible for making 
this phenomenon appear among the Jews rather than elsewhere. 

In the last century before Christ, we find that the widespread 
poverty is accompanied by an increased desire on the part of the 
proletarians and their friends to remedy the evil by their or- 
ganizations. Common meals, the last remnant of the original 
communism, also serve as the beginning of the later communism. 

But among the Jews the need for union and mutual aid was 
particularly great. Fellow-countrymen living abroad will always 
stand more closely together than at home, and there was no one 
more homeless, more constantly in foreign lands than the Jew 
outside of Judea. Therefore, the Jews among themselves were 
characterized by a charity which was just as striking as their 
exclusiveness with regard to non-Jews. Tacitus mentions in the 
same breath their hatred toward all other nations, and their ever- 
ready charity to each other.** 

They seem to have clung with particular obstinacy to their. 
organizations having common meals. It would otherwise be im- 
possible to explain why Caesar, who forbade all organizations 
that were not of great age, should make an exception in favor of 
Jewish organizations. 

“While he made the establishment of all other independent or- 
ganizations holding property of their own depend on the consent 
of the Senate, he placed nothing in the way of the formation of 
Jewish organizations with common meals and property of their 
own. In view of the widespread desire for fellowship which 
then characterized the organizations so much feared and per- 
secuted by the state, this favoring of the Jewish religious or- 
ganizations caused a large number of pagans to apply for admis- 


64 Flistories, V, 5. 


THE JEWS AFTER THE EXILE 319 


sion to the Jewish community, which was granted them without 
difficulty.” °° 

It was natural for such an association, if proletarian, to assume 
a purely communistic character. But it was difficult for the 
organization in a large city to do more than provide common meals - 
from the common provisions. Nor was there much need for 
more; clothing was not an important item among the proletarians 
in Southern Europe; it was an adornment rather than a protection 
from the weather. The proletarians of the city could always find 
a nook to sleep in. Furthermore, their occupations usually scat- 
tered them to the various parts of the city, where these consisted 
in begging, stealing, peddling, bearing burdens, etc. 

The common meal of the organization—to which each member 
contributed his part and which each member attended, whether 
he happened to be in a position to make a contribution or not— 
was the most important bond cementing the organization, the 
most important means of protecting the individual member against 
the vicissitudes of life, only too fatal to those who had no prop- 
erty. 

But it was not the same in the city as in the country. In the 
city, the household and occupation are closely connected. Com- 
mon meals also require a common dwelling and a common man- 
agement. Large agricultural establishments were nothing unusual 
at the time; run either by slaves or as large communistic families, 
household brotherhoods, they are a peculiarity of this stage of 
society. 

But Palestine was the only region in which the Jews still had 
a peasantry; the latter, as we have seen, was in close and constant 
contact with the large city of Jerusalem and its proletariat. It 
was therefore not difficult for communistic tendencies, more 
natural to the Jewish proletariat than to any other at that period, 
to pass into the country districts and there attain the development 
which is characteristic of the Essenes. 

The economic basis of the Essenian organization was the peas- 


65 OQ, Holtzmann, Das Ende des jiidischen Staatswesens und die Entstehung 
des Christentums, 1888, p. 460. 


320 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ant economy. ‘They are all engaged in agriculture,” is Josephus’ 
Somewhat exaggerated statement (Antiquities, xviii, I, 5). 

But such an organization could only maintain itself in the 
provinces while tolerated by the state. A producing codperative 
organization cannot exist as a secret society, particularly in the 
country. 

Essenism was therefore bound up with the existence of Jewish 
freedom. The destruction of the latter meant that of the former 
also. And it was not capable of existing in a large city, outside 
of a free Palestine, as a secret society. 

The large city of Jerusalem was nevertheless destined to de- 
velop a form of organization that turned out to be more adaptable 
than any other to the needs of the urban proletariat throughout 
the Empire, finally even more adaptable than any other to the 
needs of the Empire itself. 

This organization, born from Judaism, extended over the entire 
Empire and absorbed all the elements of the new attitude towards 
life, which arose from the social transformation and disintegration 
of that era. 

We have now to consider this organization, which is the Chris- 
tian Congregation. 


PART FOUR 


THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 


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I. THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 


a. The Proletarian Character of the Congregation 


WE have seen that the purely nationalistic character of demo- 
cratic Zealotism did not correspond to the needs of many pro- 
letarian elements in Jerusalem. But the flight from the great 
city into the open country, which had been the effort of the 
Essenes, did not suit everyone’s taste. Then, as now, it was easy 
to escape from the country, difficult to escape from the city. The 
proletarian who had become accustomed to city life no longer 
felt at home when in the country. The rich, in their country 
villas, perhaps found a pleasant change from the turmoil of the 
great city; but the return to the country in the case of the pro- 
letarian meant hard work in the fields, which he had not learned 
to do, and to which he was not equal. 

The mass of the proletarians necessarily preferred, in Jeru- 
salem as well as in other large cities, to remain in the city. Essen- 
ism did not offer them what they needed. Certainly not to those 
among them who belonged to the Lumpenproletariat and had be- 
come accustomed to live as social parasites. 

By the side of the Zealots and the Essenes, there necessarily 
was built up a third proletarian tendency, uniting the Zealotic 
and Essenian tendencies in one movement. The expression of 
this tendency was the congregation of the Messiah. 

It is generally recognized that the Christian congregation orig- 
inally embraced proletarian elements almost exclusively, and was a 
proletarian organization. And this was true for a long time after 
the earliest beginnings. 

Saint Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians points out 
that neither culture nor property was represented in the congre- 
gation. 

“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise 
men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; 

323 


324 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound 
the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to 
confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the 
world and things which are despised, hath God chosen.” * 

A good outline of the proletarian character of the primitive 
Christian congregation is given by Friedlander in his Roman Life 
and Manners under the Early Empire, from which we have 
already quoted several times: 

“However numerous the causes that contributed to the spread 
of the Gospel, it is certain that before the middle or end of the 
Second Century it had only a few isolated followers among the 
upper classes. Not only did their philosophical training, and a 
general education intimately connected with polytheism, offer the 
strongest resistance, but, in addition, the Christian profession of 
faith led to the most dangerous conflicts with the existing order 
of things; and, lastly, the renunciation of all earthly interests 
was naturally most difficult for those who possessed honor, 
wealth and influence. The poor and lowly, says Lactantius, are 
more ready to believe than the rich, whose hostility was no doubt 
in many ways aroused against the socialistic tendencies of Chris- 
tianity. On the other hand, in the lower strata of society the 
spread of Christianity, assisted to a remarkable extent by the 
dispersion of the Jews, must have been very rapid, especially in 
Rome; as early as the year 64 the number of Christians there 
must have been considerable.” 

But this expansion was for a long time limited to certain 
localities. 

“Statements quite accidentally preserved show that up to 98 
some 42, up to 180 some 74, up to 325 more than 550, places 
contained Christian communities.” , 

“But in the Roman Empire the Christians not only formed a 
small minority as late as in the Third Century, but this minority, 
at least up to the beginning of the century, was drawn almost 
exclusively from the lowest classes of society. It was a joke 
amongst the heathen that the Christians could only convert the 
simple-minded, only slaves, women and children; that they were 

1] Corinthians, i, 26 ff. 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 325 


rude, uneducated, and boorish; that the members of their com- 
munities were chiefly people of no account, artisans and old 
women. The Christians themselves did not dispute this. Jerome 
says: the community of Christ is recruited, not from the Lyceum 
and the Academy, but from the lowest rabble (de vili plebecula). 
It is expressly attested by Christian writers that, even up to the 
middle of the Third Century, the new faith counted but few 
adherents amongst the higher classes. Eusebius says that the 
peace which the Church enjoyed, under Commodus (180-192 
A.D.), contributed greatly to its propagation, ‘so that several 
persons in Rome, distinguished for their birth and wealth, turned 
to salvation with their entire household and family’. Origen, in 
the reign of Alexander Severus (222-235 a.D.), says that ‘at the 
present day rich men and many high dignitaries, as well as deli- 
cate and nobly born ladies, receive the Christian messengers of 
the word’; that is to say, Christianity then obtained successes 
of which it had not previously been able to boast. . . . Conse- 
quently, from the time of Commodus onwards, the spread of 
Christianity amongst the upper classes is variously and expressly 
attested, whereas the reverse is the case in regard to the preceding 
period. . . . The only persons of rank in the time before Com- 
modus, whose conversion to Christianity seems probable, are the 
Consul Flavius Clemens, executed in the year 95 A.D., and his 
wife (or sister), Flavia Domitilla, who was banished to Pontia.” ’ 

This proletarian character of early Christianity is not the least 
of the reasons for our being so poorly informed on this early 
phase. Its first advocates may have been very eloquent persons, 
but they were not versed in reading and writing. These arts 
were far stranger to the habits of the masses of the people of those 
days than they are now. For a number of generations the Chris- 
tian teaching of the history of its congregation was limited to 
oral transmission, the handings down of feverishly excited, in- 
credibly credulous persons, reports of events that had been wit- 
nessed only by a small circle, if they ever really took place at all; 
and which therefore could not be investigated by the mass of the 
population, and certainly not by its critical and unprejudiced 

2 Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. iii, pp. 205-208. 


326 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


elements. Only when more educated persons, of a higher social 
level, turned to Christianity, was a beginning made in the written 
fixation of its traditions, but even in this case the purpose was 
not historical so much as controversial, to defend certain views 
and demands. 

Much courage or much prejudice is required, not to mention a 
complete ignorance of the conditions of historical reliability, to 
pretend to be able to give a record of the career and even the 
speeches of certain personages with absolute certainty, on the 
basis of literary documents produced in the above manner and 
full of impossibilities and outright contradictions. We have 
already shown in our Intrceduction that it is impossible to say 
anything definite of the alleged founder of the Christian congre- 
gation. After what has just been said, we may add that it is really 
not necessary to know anything about him. All the modes of 
thought which are commonly designated, in praise or condemna- 
tion, as characteristically Christian, have already been shown to 
be products in part of the Roman-Hellenic, and in part of the 
Jewish tradition. There is not a single Christian thought that 
requires the assumption of a sublime prophet and superman to 
explain its origin, not one thought that cannot be pointed out 
before the time of Jesus in “pagan” or Jewish literature. 

Slight as is the importance, however, as far as our historical 
understanding is concerned, of being fully informed concerning 
the personality of Jesus and his apostles, it is nevertheless very 
important to have definite information concerning the nature of 
the primitive Christian congregation. 

Fortunately this is by no means impossible. No matter how 
fantastically adorned or how full of absolute inventions the 
speeches and acts of the persons may be who were honored by 
the Christians as their champions and teachers, there is no doubt 
that the first Christian authors wrote in the spirit of the Christian 
congregations in which and for which they were working. They 
were simply transmitting traditions from an earlier day which 
they might, to be sure, alter as to detail, but whose fundamental 
character was nevertheless so definite that they would have en- 
countered active opposition had they attempted to alter these 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 327 


traditions in any very striking manner. They might attempt to 
weaken or reinterpret the spirit that prevailed in the beginnings 
of the Christian congregation; but conjure it away completely 
they could not. Such attempted dilutions can still be proved, and 
they become bolder and bolder as the Christian congregation loses 
more and more of its primitive proletarian character and accepts 
educated as well as wealthy and respected personages as mem- 
bers. But precisely these attempts enable us to recognize clearly 
this original proletarian character. 

The knowledge we have thus gained finds a support in the 
evolution of later Christian sects, which are well known from 
their very beginnings and which clearly reflect in their later 
history the evolution of the Christian congregation after the 
Second Century, as we now know it. We may therefore assume 
that this sequence of events constituted a natural law, and that 
the beginnings, well known to us, of the later sects, furnish an 
analogy to the unknown beginnings of Christianity. To be sure, 
such an argument by analogy does not constitute evidence in itself 
alone, but it may very well give support to a hypothesis that has 
been formed in another way. 

Both these elements, the analogy of the later sects, as well as 
the actually preserved remnants of the earliest traditions of primi- 
tive Christian life, are equally definite as evidences of tendencies 
which we might reasonably have expected in advance, knowing 
the proletarian character of the congregation. 


b. Class Hatred 


In the first place, there is a savage class hatred against the rich. 

This class hatred is clearly apparent in the Gospel of Saint 
Luke, which was written early in the Second Century, particularly 
in the story of Lazarus, which we find in this Gospel alone (xvi, 
19 ff.). In this passage, the rich man goes to Hell and the poor 
man into Abraham’s bosom, not because the former is a sinner 
and the latter a righteous man; of this we are told nothing. The 
rich man is condemned for the simple reason that he is a rich 
man. Abraham calls to him: ‘Remember that thou in thy life- 
time receivedst thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things; 


328 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.” It was the 
desire for revenge on the part of the oppressed which rejoiced 
in this depiction of the future state. The same Gospel has Jesus 
say: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
Kingdom (Baowciav) of God, for it is easier for a camel to go 
through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the 
Kingdom of God (xvii, 24, 25).’’ Here also the rich man is con- 
demned because of his wealth, not because of his sinfulness. 

Similarly in the Sermon on the Mount (Luke vi, 20 f.): 
“Blessed be ye poor (ntwxoi are those so poor that they must 
beg): for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that 
hunger now: for ye shall be filled; blessed are ye that weep now: 
for ye shall laugh . . . but woe unto you that are rich: for ye 
have received your consolation; woe unto you that are full! for 
ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall 
mourn and weep.” 

The reader will observe that to be rich and enjoy one’s wealth 
is regarded as a crime, worthy of the most cruel punishment. 

The same spirit is still breathed by the Epistle of Saint James 
to the Twelve Tribes of the Diaspora, dating from the middle 
of the Second Century: 

“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries 
that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your 
garments are moth-eaten; your gold and silver is cankered, and 
the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat 
your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for 
the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped 
down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: 
and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears 
of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth 
and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of 
slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just and he doth 
not resist you. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming 
of the Lord.” (v. 1 ff.). 

Saint James even fumes against the rich in his own ranks, 
against those who have joined the Christian congregation: 

“Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 329 


But the rich in that he is made low, because as the flower of the 
grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with 
a burning heat but he withereth the grass and the flower thereof 
falleth and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth; so also shall 
the rich man fade away in his ways. . . . Hearken my beloved 
brethren. Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in 
faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them 
that love him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich 
men oppress you and draw you before the judgment seats? Do 
they not blaspheme that worthy name by which ye are called?” ° 

Few are the occasions on which the class hatred of the modern 
proletariat has assumed such fanatical forms as that of the Chris- 
tian proletariat. In the short moments in which the proletariat 
of our epoch has hitherto held power it has never heaped ven- 
geance on the rich. To be sure, it feels itself far stronger today 
than the proletariat of nascent Christianity ever felt. But he 
who knows himself to be strong is always more inclined to be 
magnanimous than he who is weak. It is a sign of the lacking 
confidence of the bourgeoisie in its own strength that they always 
wreak such terrible vengeance on an uprisen proletariat. 

The Gospel of Saint Matthew is younger by a few decades 
than that of Saint Luke. In the meantime, wealthy and cultured 
persons had begun to seek contact with Christianity, and many 
a Christian propagandist began to feel the need of putting the 
Christian doctrine more amiably in order to attract these people. 
The “‘fire-eating” primitive Christian manner was no longer avail- 
able. But this older attitude had struck too deep a root to be 
merely set aside, and an effort was made therefore simply to 
“revise” it in an opportunistic sense. It is this revisionistic spirit 
that has made the Gospel of Saint Matthew “the gospel of contra- 
dictions”,* but also the “favorite gospel of the Church”. In this 
Gospel, the Church found “the audacious and revolutionary char- 
acter of the primitive Christian enthusiasm and Socialism so 
modified into the appropriate golden mean of an ecclesiastical 
opportunism, that it no longer seemed a menace to the existence 

3 James i, Q-II; ii, 5-7. 

4Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 378, 380. 


330 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


of an organized church that had made its peace with human 
society”. 

Of course, the various writers who successively collaborated in 
producing the Gospel of Saint Mark omitted all the unfavorable 
parts which they possibly could omit, such as the story of Lazarus, 
the condemnation of the inheritance dispute, which also leads to 
a tirade against the rich (Saint Luke xii, 13 ff.). But the Sermon 
on the Mount had probably become too popular and too well 
known to make it feasible to treat this episode in the same way. 
The Sermon was therefore bowdlerized. Matthew has Jesus say: 
“Blessed are the poor im spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of 
Heaven. . . . Blessed are they who are hungry and thirsty for 
justice, for they shall have their fill.” 

Of course, this astute revisionism has wiped out every trace of 
class hatred. It is now the poor in spirit that shall be blessed. 
It is uncertain what manner of persons are meant by this expres- 
sion, whether idiots, or such who are beggars only in their own 
imaginations and not in reality, in other words, those who con- 
tinue to possess while maintaining that their heart is not attached 
to their possessions. Probably it is the latter who are meant, but 
at any rate the condemnation of wealth, which was once expressed 
by declaring the beggar blessed, is no longer present. It is amus- 
ing to find that the hungry have now been transformed into those 
hungry for justice, who are fed with the prospect that they shall 
have their fill of justice. The Greek word here translated by 
“have their fill” (xopta@w) was used mostly of animals, being 
applied to humans only in a contemptuous or ludicrous sense, to 
designate a base mode of stuffing one’s belly. The fact that the 
word occurs in the Sermon on the Mount also is a suggestion of 
the proletarian origin of Christianity, the expression having prob- 
ably been current in the circles from which it was drawn, to indi- 
cate a full appeasement of bodily hunger. But it becomes ridicu- 
lous when applied to the satisfaction of a hunger for justice. 

The counterpart of these beatitudes, namely, the cursing of the 
rich man, is not found in Matthew at all. Even the most in- 
genious distortion could not have devised a form that would have 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 331 


made them acceptable to the wealthy classes whose conversion 
was desired, and therefore this portion had to go. 

But however much certain influential circles of the Christian 
congregation, as it became more and more opportunistic, may 
have sought to obliterate its proletarian character, the proletariat 
and its class hatred were not eliminated thereby, and scattered 
thinkers arose from time to time to express this hatred. The 
reader will find a good collection of passages from the writings 
of Saint Clement, Bishop Asterius, Lactantius, Basilius the Great, 
Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Ambrose, Saint John Chrysostom, 
Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, etc., almost all of them writing 
in the Fourth Century, when Christianity was already a state 
religion, in the little book of Paul Pfliiger, The Socialism of the 
Fathers of the Church.’ All of them give vent to the sharpest 
denunciations of the rich, placing them on the same level with 
thieves and bandits. 


c. Communism 


In view of this outspoken proletarian character of the congre- 
gation, it is natural that it should aim to achieve a communistic 
organization. In fact, so much is definitely declared. We read 
in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘And they continued stedfastly in 
the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship (kotvwyig) and in breaking 
of bread and in prayers. . . . And all that believed were together 
and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods 
and parted them to all men, as every man had need”? (ii, 42, 44). 

“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart 
and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things 
which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. 
. . . Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many 
as were possessors of lands or of houses sold them and brought 
the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at 
the apostles’ feet: a distribution was made unto every man as he 
had need” (iv, 32-34). 

It will be remembered that Ananias and Sapphira, who had 


5 Der Sozialismus der Kirchenvater. 


tase FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


attempted to withhold some of their money from the congregation, 
were punished for this offense by death by divine intervention. 

Saint John Chrysostom (the longer word means ‘‘mouth of 
gold’’, because of his fiery eloquence), an undaunted critic of his 
period (347-407 A.D.), added to the above quoted presentation 
of primitive Christian communism a discussion of its advantages, 
which has a very realistic economic sound, far removed from 
ecstatic asceticism. We find this passage in the eleventh of his 
Homilies (sermons) on the Acts of the Apostles. His words are 
as follows: 

“Grace was among them, because none suffered lack, for the 
reason that they gave so generously that none remained poor. 
For they did not give one part and retain another part for them- 
selves; nor did they give everything as if it were their own prop- 
erty. They abolished inequality and lived in great abundance; 
and they did this in the most praiseworthy manner. They did 
not dare to place alms into the hands of the needy, nor did they 
give largesses with arrogant condescension, but they laid them at 
the feet of the apostles and made them the masters and dis- 
tributors of the gifts. Each man took his needs then from the 
supply of the community, not from the private property of individ- 
uals. This prevented the givers from acquiring a vain self-com- 
placency. 

“Tf we should do this today, we should live much more happily, 
rich as well as poor. And the poor would not gain more happiness 
thereby than the rich. . . . For the givers not only did not be- 
come poor but they made the poor rich also. 

“Let us picture the thing to ourselves thus: All give that which 
they have to the common fund. Let no one be disturbed by this 
prospect, either the rich man or the poor man. Do you know 
how much money would thus be accumulated? I suppose—for 
it cannot be determined with absolute certainty—that if each 
man should give up all his money, his fields, his lands, his houses 
(not to mention the slaves, for we may assume that the first 
Christians had none, having most probably liberated them), I 
suppose a mass of about a million pounds of gold could be raised, 
perhaps even twice or thrice as much. For, let us see, how many 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 333 


persons does our city (Constantinople) contain? How many 
Christians? Are there not fully one hundred thousand? And 
how many pagans and Jews? How many thousands of pounds 
of gold could thus be raised? And how many poor have we? I 
do not believe that there are more than fifty thousand. How 
much would be required in order to feed them every day? If 
they should dine at a common table, the costs could not be very 
great. What shall we set about to do with our gigantic treasury? 
Do you believe that it could ever be exhausted? And will not 
the blessing of God be poured out upon us a thousand times 
more abundantly than before? Shall we not make a heaven of 
the earth? If this experiment turned out so brilliantly successful 
in the case of three thousand or five thousand persons (the first 
Christians) and none of them suffered any lack, how much better 
must be the outcome in the case of so great a number as now? 
Will not each newcomer add something of his own? 

“The dividing up of lands causes greater expenditures and 
therefore produces poverty. Just consider a house with a man 
and wife and ten children. She weaves, he tries to make a living 
on the market-place; will it be cheaper for them to live together 
in one house or to live separately? Of course it will be more 
expensive to live separately. If the ten sons separate, they will 
need ten houses, ten tables, ten servants, and everything else 
tenfold in the same manner. And how is it with the mass of 
slaves? Are they not fed together at one table in order to save 
expense? Splitting up always leads to extravagance; joining 
together always leads to a husbanding of resources. Thus people 
live now in monasteries and so the faithful ones lived. Who then 
- died of hunger? Who was not richly satisfied? And yet people 
fear this condition more than they would fear a leap into the 
boundless sea. Why should we not at least make an effort and 
go about the thing bravely! How great would be our blessing 
thereby! For if in those days, when the number of the faithful 
was so small, only from three to five thousand, if at that time 
when the whole world was hostile to us, where we met with con- 
solation nowhere, our predecessors set about the task so reso- 
lutely, how much more confidence should we have, now that there 


334 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


are faithful everywhere by the grace of God! Who would then 
still wish to remain a pagan? No one, I think. We should 
draw all to us and make all incline toward us.” ° 

The first Christians were not capable of making such a clear 
and calm statement of the case. But their short observations, 
exclamations, demands, imprecations, clearly indicate in every 
case the uniformly communistic character of the first stage of the 
Christian congregation. 

In the Gospel of Saint John which, it must be admitted, was 
not written until the middle of the Second Century, the com- 
munistic fellowship of Jesus with his apostles is taken for granted. 
They all had but one purse between them and this purse was 
carried by Judas Iscariot. John, who in this case as in all others 
attempts to outdo his predecessors, increases the abhorrence in 
which the betrayer Judas must be held by branding him as an 
embezzler of the common fund. John describes the incident of 
Mary’s anointing the feet of Jesus with precious ointment. 

“Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, 
which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for 
three hundred pence and given to the poor? This he said, not 
that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the 
bag and bare what was put therein.” * 

At the last supper, Jesus says to Judas: “That thou doest, do 
quickly.” 

“‘Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake thus 
unto him. For some of them thought, because Judas had the 
bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have 
need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to 
the poor.” ° 

Jesus in the Gospels repeatedly demands of his disciples that 
each shall give away everything he possesses. 

“So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all 
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” ° 

“Sell that ye have, and give alms.” (Luke xii, 33.). 


6S.P.N. Joanni Chrysostomi opera omnia que exstant, Paris, 1859, Ed. 
Migne, vol. ix, pp. 96-98. 7 John xii, 4-7. 
8 John xiii, 27-29. 9 Luke xiv, 33. 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 335 


“And a certain ruler (Gexwv) asked him (Jesus), saying, Good 
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said 
unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, that 
is, God. Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit 
adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, 
Honor thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these things 
have I kept from my youth up. Now when Jesus heard these 
things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that 
thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in Heaven; and come, follow me. And when he heard 
this he was very sorrowful; for he was very rich.” *° 

This incident impels Jesus to utter the parable of the camel, 
for which it will be easier to pass through the needle’s eye, than 
for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of 
Heaven is represented as accessible only to those who share their 
wealth with the poor. 

The Gospel attributed to Saint Mark presents the matter in 
exactly the same light. 

But the revisionistic Saint Matthew here again dilutes the 
original severity of the demand, by putting it only in a hypothet- 
ical form. Matthew has Jesus say to the rich youth: “If thou 
wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the 
poor” (xix, 21). 

What Jesus was originally represented as demanding of every 
one of his adherents, of every member of his congregation, became 
in time a demand to be made only of those who laid claim to 
perfection. 

This sequence of events is quite natural in an organization that 
was at first purely proletarian and later admitted more and more 
elements that were wealthy. 

Nevertheless, there are a number of theologians who deny the 
communistic character of primitive Christianity. They allege 
that the report in the Acts of the Apostles on this subject is of 
later origin; as was so often the case in antiquity, it is alleged 
that the writer here also had placed the ideal condition of which 
he dreamed, back into the past. But these theologians forget 


10 Luke xviii, 18-23. 


336 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


that the communistic character of primitive Christianity was very 
inconvenient for the official Church of the later centuries, which 
was more or less accommodating in its attitude toward the rich. 
If this picture of primitive Christianity depended on a later fabri- 
cation, the champions of the opportunist tendency would not have 
hesitated to protest against it and would have seen to it that the 
books containing such pictures should be stricken from the canon 
of books recognized by the Church. The Church has never tol- 
erated forgeries except when it was fully in accord with its policy 
to do so, and surely this would not apply to communism. If com- 
munism has been officially admitted to be the most basic demand 
of the primitive congregation, surely such recognition has been 
given only for the reason that it was impossible to do otherwise, 
tradition in this matter having struck too deep a root and being 
too generally disseminated. 


d. The Objections to Communism 


The objections of those who would deny the existence of com- 
munism in the primitive congregation are by no means convincing. 
We find all these objections recapitulated by a critic who opposes 
the picture I drew of primitive Christianity in my Forerunners 
of Socialism. 

This critic, A. K., a Doctor of Theology, published his objec- 
tions in an article in Die Neue Zeit, concerning the So-called 
Primitive Christian Communism.** 

It is pointed out to us, first of all, that “The Sermons of the 
Nazarene did not aim at an economic revolution.”* But where 
does A. K. get this information? The Acts of the Apostles seem 
to him an uncertain source on which to base the description of 
organizations whose origin he assigns to the period after the 
alleged death of Christ; the Gospels, which are some of them 
younger than the Acts of the Apostles, he considers as absolutely 
sure sources even for the speeches of Christ! 

As a matter of fact, the same truth is applicable to the Gospels 
as to the Acts of the Apostles. What we may learn from them 


11 Der sogenannte urchristliche Kommunismus. Die Neue Zeit, vol. xxvi, 
No. 2, p. 482. 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 337 


is the character of those that wrote them, in addition they may 
also contain some reminiscences, but reminiscences of organiza- 
tions are more tenacious than reminiscences of speeches, and can- 
not be so easily distorted. Furthermore, as we have seen, we can 
very well ascertain in the communicated speeches concerning 
Christ a quality that very definitely indicates the communism of 
the primitive congregation. 

The specific teachings of Jesus, of which we know nothing 
definite at all, cannot be used to prove anything against the 
assumption of the early communism. Furthermore, A. K. makes 
every effort to have us believe that the practical communism of 
the Essenes, which was developing under the very eyes of the 
proletarians of Jerusalem, had had no influence on them at all. 
But the communistic theories of the Greek philosophers and poets 
had exerted the most profound influence on the uneducated pro- 
letarians of the Christian congregations outside of Jerusalem and 
had imbued them with communistic ideals, the realization of 
which, in accordance with the habits of the time, they had placed 
in the past; in other words, in the period of the primitive con- 
gregation in Jerusalem. 

In other words, we are told that the educated succeeded later 
in imbuing the proletarians with a communism, the practical ob- 
servation of which had earlier left them untouched. We should 
certainly need the strongest proofs to make this view seem 
plausible to us. All that we have in the form of evidence is 
opposed to it. As the influence of the educated classes upon 
Christianity increases, Christianity departs more and more from 
communism, as we have already seen from Matthew, and as we 
shall later learn in tracing the evolution of the congregation. 

A. K.’s ideas of the Essenes are entirely erroneous. He says 
of the communistic Christian congregation of Jerusalem: 

“The fact that this single communistic experiment should hap- 
pen to be made by an association consisting of Jews should arouse 
our suspicion. Down to the very beginning of our era, the Jews 
never made any such social experiments; never before then was 
there such a thing as a Jewish communism. But communism, 
both theoretical and practical, was nothing new to the Hellenes.” 


338 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Our critic does not reveal the source in which he discovers the 
practical communism of the Hellenes in the time of Christ. But 
it is almost incredible to hear him say that he finds less com- 
munism among the Jews than among the Hellenes, when as an 
actual fact the communism of the former is far superior to the 
communistic visions of the latter, owing to its having been actually 
carried out. And A. K. evidently has not the slightest suspicion 
of the fact that the Essenes are mentioned a hundred and fifty 
years before Christ, but seems to think that they did not arise 
until the time of Christ! 

Yet, these same Essenes who are represented as having had no 
influence on the practices of the Jerusalem congregation, are 
alleged to have produced the communist Jegend which was ad- 
mitted to the Acts of the Apostles in the Second Century after 
Christ. The Essenes, who disappear from sight with the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, probably because they were dragged down in 
the general destruction of the Jewish community, are represented 
as having imbued the Hellenic proletarians with legends concern- 
ing the origin of the Christian congregation, and caused them to 
adopt the idea of a communistic past, at a time when the hostility 
between Judaism and Christianity had already assumed the 
sharpest forms, while it is also claimed that at the time when the 
Jewish proletarians founded an organization in Jerusalem which 
necessarily must have had close personal and practical contact 
with the Essenian movement, the latter had not the slightest 
influence on that organization! 

It is quite possible that Essenian legends and views were among 
the elements included in early Christian literature. But it is far 
more probable that in that early state of the Christian congre- 
gation, in which it was as yet producing no literature, its organi- 
zation was under the influence of Essenian models. And this 
could only have been an influence in the sense of the actual 
carrying out of communism, and not in the sense of merely 
imagining an alleged communistic past, corresponding to no 
reality. 

This entire artificial construction, the creation of modern 
theologians, and accepted by A. K., which would deny the 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 339 


Essenian influence at a time when there really was such an influ- 
ence, and then ascribe a decisive function to it at a time when 
it had ceased, merely shows how ingenious many a theological 
brain can become in the service of the task of liberating the early 
Church from the “indecent odor” of communism. 

But all the above are not decisive reasons for A. K. He knows 
a “chief reason,” hitherto “never appreciated: The opponents of 
the Christians have accused them of all possible offenses, but not 
of having been communists. And yet these opponents would not 
have relinquished the opportunity of making such an accusation 
if there had been any foundation for it.” I fear the world will 
continue to ignore this “chief reason”. For A. K. cannot deny 
that the communistic character of Christianity is distinctly em- 
phasized in a number of passages in the Acts of the Apostles, as 
well as in the Gospels. He merely maintains that these passages 
are purely legendary in character. But there is no denying that 
they are there and that they express genuine Christian tendencies. 
If the opponents of Christianity nevertheless did not emphasize 
the communism of Christianity, this cannot be due to the fact 
that they found no support for such an accusation. For they 
accused the Christians of other things, such as infanticide, incest, 
etc., for which there was not the slightest evidence in the Chris- 
tian literature. It is hard to believe, therefore, that they would 
have refrained from making accusations for which they could 
offer proof in the Christian writings of even the earliest periods 
of Christian literature. 

We must seek the reason for this elsewhere than in the absence 
of communism in early Christianity. 

The true reason is that the attitude toward communism in 
those days was quite different from that of today. 

Today, communism in the early Christian sense, in other words, 
dividing up, has become incompatible with the progress of pro- 
duction, with the existence of society. Today, economic needs 
unconditionally demand just the opposite of a dividing up, namely, 
they demand a concentration of wealth in a few spots, either in 
the hands of private individuals, as is the case today, or in the 
hands of society, of the state, of the municipalities, perhaps also 


340 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


in those of codperative organizations, as in the Socialist scheme 
of things. 

But in the days of Christianity the case was quite different. 
Aside from mining, industry was almost altogether of a petty 
kind. In agriculture, it is true, there were cases of extensive 
large-scale establishments, but this large-scale enterprise, manned 
by slaves, was not technically superior to the petty establishment, 
and could only maintain itself where it permitted of a ruthless 
destructive exploitation of resources with the aid of the labor of 
cheap slaves. Large-scale production had not become the basis 
of the entire mode of production that it is today. 

Therefore, the concentration of wealth in a few hands then 
meant anything else but an enhancement of the productivity of 
labor, and certainly not a basis for the process of production and 
therefore of the social welfare. 

The concentration of wealth in a few hands did not mean a 
development of the productive forces, but merely an accumula- 
tion of articles of consumption in such volume that the individual 
could not possibly consume them himself, with the result that he 
had no other recourse but to share them with others. 

And the rich did this on a large scale, and partly voluntarily. 
Generosity was considered one of the most distinguished virtues 
in the Roman imperial era. It was a means of gaining adherents 
and friends and therefore a means of increasing one’s power. 

“Slaves, on their manumission, generally received a donation 
more or less generous. Martial instances one of 10,000,000 
(sesterces). The families, too, of dependents and clients received 
gratuities and protection. And a freedman of Cotta Messalinus, 
a friend of Tiberius, celebrates on his tombstone in the Via 
Appia, how his patron often gave him sums amounting to the 
knightly census (400,000 sesterces), educated his children, pro- 
vided paternally for his sons, conferred a military tribunate on 
his son Cottanus, and paid the expenses of that tombstone.” ” 

There were very many such cases. But, where democracy pre- 
vailed, there was also an involuntary sharing of possessions in 


12 Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, vol. i, 
Ppp. 114, II5. 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 341 


addition to the voluntary one. Anyone desiring an office had to 
purchase it by generous gifts to the people; the latter, wherever 
they had power, in addition imposed high taxes on the rich, in 
order to live on the yield of these taxes, while citizens were recom- 
pensed from the revenues of the state for their participation in 
the popular assemblies and even for their attendance at public 
spectacles, or regaled at the public expense at great public tables, 
or given food from the public stores. 

There was nothing offensive in the eyes of the masses in the 
thought that the rich existed in order that they might share their 
property with others, nothing that contradicted the general views. 
It was rather an idea fully in accord with these views. 

The masses were not repelled by such actions, but rather flat- 
tered by them. The opponents of the Christians would have been 
fools to have emphasized just this phase. Let the reader merely 
note the respect with which such conservative writers as Josephus 
and Philo speak of the communism of the Essenes; they do not 
find this communism repulsive or ridiculous but quite sublime. 

A. K.’s “principal objection” to the assumption of a primitive 
Christian communism, namely, that the Christians were not ac- 
cused of this practice by their opponents, is therefore merely a 
proof that A. K. sees the past with the eyes of modern capitalistic 
society and not with its own eyes. 

In addition to these objections, which are based on no proofs 
at all and therefore are mere imaginings, A. K. now mobilizes a 
number of strictures which are based on facts related in the Acts 
of the Apostles. Curiously enough, our critic, who is so skeptical 
with regard to the delineations, in primitive Christian literature, 
of conditions of long standing, now accepts every mention of a 
single occurrence at its face value. It is the same case as if he 
should declare the descriptions of social conditions in the heroic 
age which are found in the Odyssey to be inventions, but should 
accept Polyphemus and Circe as historical characters who actually 
performed the deeds ascribed to them. 

But even these individual facts do not militate against the 
assumption of communism in the early congregation. 

In the first place, A..K. says the congregation at Jerusalem had 


342 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


a membership of five thousand, and asks: How could so great a 
number, with their wives and children, constitute a single family? 

No one has claimed that they constituted a single family or 
that they ate at a single table. And it would be difficult even to 
assert that the primitive congregation really did have a member- 
ship of five thousand, as is reported in the Acts of the Apostles 
(iv, 4). Statistics were not the strong point of ancient literature 
and certainly not of oriental literature; exaggeration as a means 
of producing an effect was much in favor. 

The number five thousand was often assigned in order to indi- 
cate a very great quantity. Thus, the Gospels very precisely 
state that the number of persons fed by Jesus with five loaves of 
bread was five thousand men “without women and children” 
(Matthew xiv, 21). Will my critic also insist on the correctness 
of the number in this case? 

But we have every reason to believe that the assignment of a 
membership of five thousand to the primitive congregation was 
a little boastful. 

Soon after the death of Jesus, according to the Acts of the 
Apostles, Peter delivers an eloquent revival speech, and at once 
three thousand persons have themselves baptized (ii, 41). His 
further propaganda brings it about that “many become believers” 
and now the number five thousand is given (iv, 4). Now what 
was the actual. size of the congregation at the time of the death 
of Jesus? Immediately after his death the congregation met and 
“there were about one hundred and twenty persons all together” 
(i, 15). 

Surely this indicates that the congregation at first was very 
small, in spite of the most diligent agitation on the part of Jesus 
and his apostles. And now we are to believe that suddenly, after 
his death, the congregation is increased from hardly more than a 
hundred to five thousand, by delivering a few speeches? If we 
must accept any definite number, the latter is probably much 
farther from the truth than the former. ) 

Five thousand organized members would have been a band 
quite noticeable in Jerusalem, and Josephus would surely have 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION | 343 


given them some attention. The congregation must actually have 
been very insignificant, since none of its contemporaries mentions 
it. Furthermore, A. K. raises the objection that the report con- 
cerning the communism of the congregation states, after describ- 
ing the congregation: 

“And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas 
(which is, being interpreted, the Son of Consolation), a Levite 
and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it and brought 
the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But a certain man 
named Ananias, with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession, and 
kept back a part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and 
brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” We are 
told that this is a testimony against communism, for A. K. thinks 
that Barnabas would not have been singled out for mention if 
the members had sold their possessions and brought the money 
to the apostles. 

A. K. forgets that Barnabas is here contrasted with Ananias as 
a model of proper conduct; surely nothing could more clearly 
express the demand of communism. Was it necessary for. the 
Acts of the Apostles to mention every man that sold his posses- 
sions? We do not know why it was just Barnabas that received 
mention, but to maintain that his mention is equivalent to a state- 
ment that ke only had made an actual practice of communism, 
is putting too low an estimate on the intelligence of the authors 
of Acts. The example of Barnabas is mentioned in direct con- 
nection with the fact that all who owned anything sold it. If 
Barnabas is given special mention, the reason may have been 
that he was a favorite of the authors of Acts, for they singled 
him out for attention again and again. But another reason may 
be that his name happened to have been handed down together 
with that of Ananias. Or perhaps these two were the only mem- 
bers of the original congregation who had anything worth selling, 
while all the rest were proletarians. 

The third fact adduced is the following: we read in the Acts 
of the Apostles (vi, 1 ff.): 

“And in those days when the number of the disciples was multi- 


344 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


plied there arose a murmuring of the congregations against the 
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily minis- 
tration.” 

“Would this be possible if communism were actually in prac- 
tice?” A. K. indignantly asks. 

But no one maintains that communism encountered no diffi- 
culties in carrying it out, or indeed, that it was not possible to 
encounter such difficulties! And the report further states, not 
that communism was now given up, but that its organization was 
improved by the introduction of a division of labor. The apostles 
were now occupied only with propaganda while a committee of 
seven members was elected to take charge of the economic func- 
tions of the congregation. 

The whole story is quite compatible with an assumption that 
communism was practiced, but becomes entirely ridiculous if we 
accept our critic’s view, borrowed by him from Holtzmann, to 
the effect that the Christians were distinguished from their Jewish | 
fellow-citizens not by their social organization, but only by their 
faith in the “recently executed Nazarene’’. 

Why should there have been any objection to the mode of divi- 
sion, unless a division had been resorted to? 

Furthermore: “In Chapter xii (Acts of the Apostles) we 
read, as a direct contradiction to the reported existence of com- 
munism, that a certain Maria, a member of the society, was living 
in a house of her own.” | 

This is true, but how does A. K. know that Maria had any 
right to sell this house? Perhaps her husband was still alive and 
had not joined the congregation? But even if she had a right to 
sell her house, the congregation would not necessarily have de- 
manded that it be sold. This house was the meeting place of the 
members; Maria had placed it at the disposal of the congregation. 
It was used by the congregation, though legally it belonged to 
Maria. ‘The fact that the congregation needed meeting places, 
that it was not a legal personage that might itself acquire such 
premises, and that therefore individual members went through 
the form of such ownership, certainly does not speak against the 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 345 


assumption of communism. We have no right to assume that the 
primitive Christian communism was so pedantically stupid in 
applying its regulations as to force its members to sell even those 
houses which it wished to make use of, handing in the proceeds 
for distribution. 

The last objection raised seems to be the fact that communism 
is reported only in the case of the congregation of Jerusalem 
while no mention of it is made in connection with the other Chris- 
tian congregations. We shall have occasion to refer to this point 
in tracing the later history of the Christian congregation. We 
shall then see whether, and to what extent, and for how long, com- 
munism was successfully carried out; but that is another question. 
We have already indicated that difficulties were encountered in 
large cities, which did not exist in the case of agricultural com- 
munities, for instance among the Essenes. 

We are concerned now only with the original communistic tend- 
encies of Christianity. We have not the slightest cause for doubt 
as to these. We have in their favor the testimony of the New 
Testament, the proletarian character of the congregation, and the 
strongly communistic tendency of the proletarian section of the 
Jews during the two centuries preceding the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, which was very clearly expressed in Essenism. 

All the arguments against the communistic tendency are based 
on misunderstandings, subterfuges and ingenious sophistries, for 
which there is not the slightest material support. 


e. Contempt for Labor 


The communism to which primitive Christianity aspired was— 
in accordance with the conditions of the times—a communism in 
articles of consumption, a communism in the distribution and 
joint consumption of such materials. As applied to agriculture 
this communism might also lead to a communism in production, 
in joint organized labor. In the large city, the manner of earning 
a living, whether by labor or by begging, necessarily dispersed 
the proletarians, owing to the conditions of production in those 
days. Communism in the large city could not signify in its goal 
anything but the highest possible stage of that bleeding of the 


346 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


rich by the poor which had been so masterfully developed in 
earlier centuries wherever the proletariat had attained political 
power, as in Athens and in Rome. The joint activities to which 
it aspired could at most be equivalent to a joint consumption of 
the foodstuffs and other materials thus obtained—a communism 
equivalent to a common household, to a family organization. In 
fact, Chrysostom, as we have seen, makes the case for communism 
from this point of view only. Who is to produce the wealth that 
is to be consumed in common, is not one of his concerns, and we 
find the same condition in primitive Christianity. The Gospels 
cite remarks by Jesus on all possible subjects, but not on labor. 
Or rather, when he does speak of labor, he does so in the most 
disdainful terms. Thus we read in Luke (xii, 22 ff.): 

“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for 
the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat and 
the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they 
neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouses nor barn; 
and God feedeth them: How much better are ye than the fowls? 
And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one 
cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least why 
take ye thought for the rest. Consider the lilies how they grow: 
they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God 
so clothed the grass which is today in the field and tomorrow is 
cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of 
little faith? And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall 
drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do 
the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth 
that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the King- 
dom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear 
not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you 
the kingdom. Sell that ye have, and give alms.” 

This by no means is to be understood as an exhortation to the 
Christian to be ascetic and therefore ignore matters of eating and 
drinking, because of the necessity of turning his mind to his soul’s 
welfare. No, the Christians are to strive for the Kingdom of 
God; in other words, for their own rule, and then they will have 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 347 


everything they need. We shall have further occasion to observe 
how earthly was their conception of this “Kingdom of God”. 


f. The Destruction of the Family 


Whenever communism is based not upon a community of pro- 
duction but upon a community of consumption, and pursues the 
goal of transforming the entire community into a new family, it 
necessarily finds the presence of the traditional family ties to be 
a disturbing element. We have already seen this in the case of 
the Essenes, and now we are to observe a repetition in the case of 
Christianity, which often expresses its hostility to the family in 
a very emphatic manner. Thus the Gospel ascribed to Mark 
tells us (iii, 31 ff.): 

“There came then his (Jesus’s) brethren and his mother, and 
standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude 
sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and 
thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, say- 
ing, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round 
about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother 
and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” Luke is par- 
ticularly emphatic on this point; we read (ix, 59 ff.): 

“And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, 
suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, 
Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom 
of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let 
me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. 
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the 
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” 

While the above is an evidence that the greatest ruthlessness 
was demanded with regard to the family, we find in another pas- 
sage in Luke a distinct expression of hatred against the family 
(xiv, 26): 

“Tf any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, 
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his 
own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” 


348 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


In this connection Matthew again is found to be the oppor- 
tunistic revisionist. Matthew renders the above sentence in the 
following manner (x, 37): 

“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy 
of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not 
worthy of me.” This already represents a considerable attenua- 
tion of the hatred toward the family. Closely connected with this 
hatred of the family is the renunciation of marriage, which was 
as inexorably demanded by Christianity as by Essenism. But 
the two systems are again found to be similar in the fact that 
both develop the two possible forms of the unmarried state: 
celibacy, or a renunciation of all conjugal life; and the irregular, 
extra-marital sexual relations that have also been designated under 
the name “community of wives.” 

There is a very noteworthy passage in Campanella’s City of 
the Sun, in which a critic maintains: ‘Saint Clement the Roman 
says that by the arrangements of the Apostles even their wives 
had to be owned in common, and praises Plato and Socrates for 
having also maintained that things should be so arranged. But 
the Glosses interpret this as meaning a common obedience to all, 
but not a community of the bed. And Tertullian confirms these 
Glosses and states that the first Christians owned everything in 
common except their wives, who, however, had shown common 
obedience to all.” 

This “common obedience” is an interesting parallel to the 
blessedness of those who are “poor in spirit”. 

A peculiar state of sexual relations is suggested by a passage 
in the Doctrines of the Twelve Apostles, one of the oldest literary 
products of Christianity, which gives an idea of its institutions 
in the Second Century; here we read (xi, 11): 

“But every prophet, tried and true, who acts with regard to 
the earthly mystery of the Church, but does not teach others to 
do that which he himself does, let him not be judged by you, 
for he has a judgment in God; such was the conduct of the ancient 


(Christian) prophets.” 
Harnack observes that the obscure words, “the earthly mystery 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 349 


of the church” signify the married state, and that the object of 
these lines was to counteract the suspicion felt by the congregation 
toward such prophets as entered into peculiar conjugal relations. 
Harnack surmises that the reference here is to persons who lived 
in marriage as eunuchs, or lived with their wives as sisters. Is it 
possible that such continence could really have given offense? We 
may hardly assume so. It would be very interesting if we could 
learn that these prophets, while no longer preaching an extra- 
marital sexual practice, nevertheless still ‘‘resembled the old 
prophets”, in other words, the first teachers of Christianity, in 
that they actually practised such relations. 

Harnack himself quotes the following passage as a “good illus- 
tration of conduct with regard to the earthly mystery of the 
church’, from the Letter on Virginity (1, 10), wrongly ascribed 
to Saint Clement: 

“Many shameless persons live together with virgins under the 
pretext of piety and thus incur danger, or they roam about 
with them alone on the paths and in wildernesses, on ways that 
are full of dangers, vexation, pitfalls, and ditches. . . . Others eat 
and drink with them, lie together with them at table, with virgins 
and consecrated women (sacratis), with luxurious revelry and 
much shamefulness; such things should not come to pass among 
the faithful and least of all among those who have chosen the 
office of virginity.” 

In the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, the apos- 
tles, who are bound to celibacy, claim the right to roam about the 
world with female comrades. Paul cries to his hearers: 

“Am I not free? . . . Have we not power to lead about a sister 
(adehonv), a wife *® (yuvaika), as well as other apostles and as 
the brethren of the Lord and Cephas (Peter) ?” ** 

A moment before Paul had advised against marriage. 


18 Luther translates thus: To lead about a sister as my wife; Weizsacker, 
“To lead about as my married wife.” Fuv7 means woman, as a sexual creature, 
the female of animals, even a concubine, and therefore also a wife. It is 
impossible that a legally married wife should here be meant by the Apostle’s 
defense of his “freedom.” 

14] Corinthians ix, I, 5. 


350 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


This roaming about of the apostle with a young lady is an im- 
portant element in the Acts of Saint Paul, a romance which is 
said by Tertullian to have been written by a presbyter in Asia 
Minor in the Second Century, according to the latter’s own ad- 
mission. Yet “these Acts were for a long time a favorite book 
of edification,” ** a sign that the facts communicated in them 
must have been considered by many pious Christians as not at all 
offensive but rather quite edifying. The most remarkable part 
of this book is the “pretty legend of Thekla, . . . which consti- 
tutes an excellent depiction of the atmosphere of the Christianity 
of the Second Century.” ** 

This legend tells us that Thekla, the betrothed of an aristo- 
cratic youth of Icarium, had heard one of the apostle’s orations 
and had at once become enthusiastic for him. The narration 
gives us an interesting personal description of the apostle: short 
in stature, bald, with crooked legs, projecting knees, large eyes, 
eyebrows meeting over the nose, a rather long nose, full of charm, 
having the appearance now of a man and now of an angel. Un- 
fortunately, we are not told which of the above corporal assets 
is to be classed as aiding to make up his angelic appearance. 

In short, the magic power of his speech makes a profound im- 
pression on the beautiful Thekla and she renounces her betrothed. 
The latter denounces Paul before the governor as a man who by 
his speeches induces women and maidens to refrain from mar- 
riage. Paul is thrown into prison but Thekla finds her way to 
his cell and is found there with him. The governor thereupon 
condemns Paul to be banished from the city and Thekla to be 
burned at the stake. She is saved by a miracle: the burning 
pyre is extinguished by a cloudburst, which also confuses and 
disperses the spectators. 

Thekla, now free, follows after Paul, whom she finds on the 
highway. He takes her by the hand and wanders to Antioch 
with her, where they meet an aristocrat, who at once falls in 
love with Thekla and is willing to take her from Paul and in- 
demnify him richly for his consent. Paul replies that she be- 


15 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, vol. iii, pp. 245, 246. 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 351 


longs not to him and he knows her not, which is a very feeble 
sort of answer for a proud apostle to make. But Thekla makes 
up for this weakness by the energy with which she defends her- 
self against the aristocratic voluptuary, who attempts to take 
possession of her by force. For this offense she is thrown to the 
wild animals in the circus, but they will do her no injury, with 
the result that she is once more freed. She now clothes herself 
as a man, cuts off her hair and again follows after Paul, who in- 
structs her to teach the word of God and probably also bestows 
upon her the right to baptize, if we may infer this from an ob- 
servation of Tertullian. 

_ The original form of this story evidently contained much that 
was offensive in the eyes of the later Church; “but as the Acts 
were found to be otherwise edifying and entertaining, the device 
of a clerical editing was resorted to, which eliminated the most 
objectionable elements, without entirely removing all traces of 
the original character of the work” (Pfleiderer, of. cit., vol. iii, p. 
256). But though many such writings may have been lost, we 
still have a sufficient number of indications that point to the ex- 
istence of peculiar sexual relations, which deviated considerably 
from the traditional forms, gave much offense, and therefore 
required energetic defense on the part of the apostles; the later 
Church, which had to bear the responsibility for these conditions, 
tried as far as possible to suppress the record of them. 

We need hardly point out that the unmarried state is likely to 
lead to extra-conjugal sexual relations, except in the case of 
fanatical ascetics. 

The fact that the Christians expected their future state, which 
was to begin with the resurrection, to be characterized by a 
cessation of marriage, is also clearly indicated by the following 
passage in which Jesus answers the delicate question: Ifa woman 
has had seven husbands in succession, to which of them will she 
belong after the resurrection: 

“And Jesus answering said unto them: The children of this 
world (aidvoc) marry, and are given in marriage: But they which 
shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrec- 
tion from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: 


352 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the 
angels; and are children of God, being the children of the resur- 
rection” (Luke xx, 34-36). 

This must not be interpreted as signifying that men would be 
pure spirits in the primitive Christian state of the future, with- 
out fleshly needs. Their physical character and their delight in 
material enjoyments is expressly emphasized, as we shall still 
have occasion to learn. There is no doubt that Jesus is here 
saying that all existing marriages will be dissolved in the state of 
the future, so that the question as to which of the seven husbands 
is the proper one loses its point. 

But we must not consider the act of the Roman Bishop Cal- 
listus (217-222), who permitted maidens and widows of sena- 
torial station to enter into extra-conjugal relations even with 
slaves, to be an evidence of hostility to marriage. This consent 
was not the product of a communism whose hostility to the family 
had been exaggerated to the highest point, but rather the product 
of an opportunistic revisionism which gladly made exceptional 
concessions in order to obtain wealthy and powerful supporters. 

But this revisionism was repeatedly opposed by the revival of 
communistic tendencies in the Christian Church, and these were 
very frequently connected with a denunciation of marriage, by 
resorting to celibacy, or with the practice of a so-called com- 
munity of wives, frequently found among the Manicheans and 
Gnostics. 

The most vigorous of these tendencies was that represented by 
the Carpocratians. 

“Epiphanes (the son of Carpocrates) taught that divine jus- 
tice had bestowed everything upon its creatures for equal pos- 
session and enjoyment. The mine and thine were not intro- 
duced into the world until human laws became operative, and 
with them theft and adultery and all other sins; for does not the 
Apostle say: ‘For by the law is the knowledge of sin’ (Romans 
iii, 20), and ‘Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law’ (vii, 7). 
Since God himself had implanted in men the powerful sexual im- 
pulse in order to maintain the race, any prohibition of sexual 
lust is absurd, and prohibition of lusting after one’s neighbor’s 


THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION 353 


wife is doubly absurd, since thereby what is common is made a 
private possession. The Gnostics therefore consider monogamy 
to be as much a transgression of the community of wives required 
by divine justice as the private ownership of property is a viola- 
tion of the community of goods. . . . Saint Clement concludes 
his sketch of these libertine Gnostics (Carpocratians and Nico- 
laites, a special division of the Simonians) with the observation 
that all these heresies may be classified according to two tenden- 
cies: either they teach a moral indifferentism or an exaggerated 
sanctimonious continence.” ** 

These were indeed the two alternatives which a consistent com- 
munism of the household might follow. We have already indi- 
cated that these two extremes may meet, that they take their 
origin from the same economic root, irreconcilable though they 
may appear to be in philosophy. 

With the dissolving, or at least the loosening, of the traditional 
family ties, there necessarily resulted a change in the position of 
woman. Once she ceased to be bound to the narrow family activi- 
ties, once she cast them off, she was enabled to devote her 
mind and her interests to other thoughts, outside the family 
sphere. According to her temperament, constitution, and social 
station, she might in some cases free herself not only from the 
family ties, but also from all ethical considerations, from all 
respect for social commandments, from all virtue and modesty. 
This was usually the case with the aristocratic ladies of imperial 
Rome, who were enabled by their great wealth and by their arti- 
ficial childlessness to refrain from doing any work in the family. 

On the other hand, the abolition of the family by a communism 
of the household produced in the proletarian women a great 
’ strengthening of the ethical feelings, which were now transferred 
from the narrow circle of the family to the much wider circle of 
the Christian congregation; their unselfish solicitude for the daily 
satisfaction of the needs of husbands and children became a 
solicitude for the liberation of the human race from all its wretch- 
edness. 

We therefore find in the early Christian congregation not only 


16 Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, vol. iii, p. 160. 


354 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


prophets, but also prophetesses. For instance, the Acts of the 
Apostles tell us of the “evangelist” Philippos; ‘‘and the same man 
had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy” (xxi, 9). 

The story of Thekla, whom Paul commissions to teach and 
perhaps even to baptize, also indicates that the presence of female 
teachers of the divine word was not at all unusual in the Christian 
congregation. 

In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chap. xi), Paul ex- 
pressly recognizes the right of women to act as prophets. He 
asks of them only that they should be veiled when discharging 
this duty in order not to arouse the lust of the angels! To be 
sure, chapter xiv says: 

“Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not 
permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be 
under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn 
anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame 
for women to speak in the church” (34, 35). 

But modern biblical critics consider this passage to be a later 
interpolation. Similarly, the entire First Epistle of Saint Paul 
to Timothy (as well as the Second, and that addressed to Titus) 
is a forgery dating from the Second Century. These writings 
already attempt to force woman back into the narrow confines of 
the family; concerning her we read: “Notwithstanding she shall 
be saved in childbearing” (ii, 15). 

This was by no means the view of the early Christian congre- 
gation; its conceptions of marriage, the family, the position of 
woman, are fully in accord with what we may logically infer from 
the forms of communism that were then realizable in practice, 
and furnish an additional proof that communism dominated the 
philosophy of primitive Christianity. 


II. THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 


a. The Coming of the Kingdom of God 


THE title of this chapter is actually a pleonasm; we know that 
“Christus” is simply the Greek translation of “Messiah.” The 
“Christian Idea of the Messiah” therefore means nothing more 
nor less, if we take it etymologically, than the messianic idea of 
the Messiah. 

But historically, Christianity does not include all those who 
believed in the Messiah; it includes only a specific class of these 
believers, a class whose messianic expectations differed but little 
at first from those of the rest of the Jewish people. 

In the first place, the Christian congregation in Jerusalem, like 
all the rest of the Jews, expected that the Messiah would come 
within a short but not precisely fixed time. While the Gospels 
preserved to us were written at a time when most of the Christians 
no longer had such sanguine hopes—the Gospels show us quite 
clearly that the expectations of Christ’s contemporaries had been 
completely disappointed—they nevertheless still preserve certain 
remnants of such a hope, remnants which they received from the 
oral and written sources with which they worked. 

According to Mark (i, 14, 15), “After that John was put in 
prison, Jesus came unto Galilee, preaching the gospel of the King- 
dom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of 
God is at hand.” 

The disciples ask Jesus what is the token by which they shall 
recognize the coming of the Messiah. He tells them all these 
tokens: earthquakes, pestilence, the disasters of war, eclipses of 
the sun, etc., and then informs them that the Son of Man will 
come with great power and magnificence to redeem his faithful, 
adding: 

“Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till 
all be fulfilled” (Luke xxi, 32). 

355 


356 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Mark’s report is similar (xiii, 30). Again he has Jesus say in 
chapter ix: 

“Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand 
here which shall not taste of death until they have seen the king- 
dom of God come with power.” 

Finally, Matthew has Jesus promise his disciples: 

“But he that endureth to the end shall be saved, but when they 
persecute you in this city, flee ye into another, for verily I say 
unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel until 
the Son of man be come” (x, 22, 23). 

Paul’s statement in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians 
(iv, 13 ff.) is similar: 

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning 
them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which 
have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 
For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which 
are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not 
prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from Heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the arch- 
angel and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall 
rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up 
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and 
so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 

It was therefore not at all necessary that one should have died 
in order to enter the kingdom of God. The living might count 
upon beholding its coming; and it was conceived as a kingdom in 
which both those who were alive at the time, as well as those 
resurrected from the dead, would enjoy life in a full corporeal 
sense. We still have traces of this belief in the Gospels, although 
the later conception of the Church dropped the idea of an earthly 
state of the future and substituted the heavenly state for it. 

Thus Jesus promises (Matthew xix, 28 ff.): “Verily I say unto 
you, that ye which have followed me in the regeneration when the 
Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit 
upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And 
everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH ~— 357 


father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s 
sake, shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting 
life.” 

In other words, the reward for having dissolved the family and 
given away one’s property will be a real enjoyment of earthly 
pleasures in the state of the future. It is particularly the pleasures 
of the table that are meant. 

Jesus threatens them that will not follow him, with exclusion 
from his society on the day after the great catastrophe: 

“There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when ye shall 
see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the king- 
dom of God and you yourselves thrust out, and they shall come 
from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from 
the south, and shall sit dowm in the kingdom of God” (Luke 
xiii, 28, 29: compare also Matthew viii, 11, 12). 

But he promises the apostles: 

“And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath ap- 
pointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my 
kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” 
(Luke xxii, 29, 30). 

Disputes even arose among the apostles as to precedence at 
table in the state of the future. James and John demand the 
places at the master’s right and left, which causes much anger 
among the remaining ten apostles (Mark x, 35 #f.). 

Jesus tells a Pharisee, at whose house he is dining, not to invite 
his friends and relatives to dine, but the poor, the crippled, the 
lame, the blind: “And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot 
recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrec- 
tion of the just.”” We are immediately made to understand the 
nature of this blessedness: ‘“‘And when one of them that sat at 
meat with him heard these things, he said unto him: Blessed is 
he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God” (Luke xiv, 15). 

But there will also be beverages to accompany the food. At 
the last supper Jesus announces: “But I say unto you, I will not 
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I 
drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 
XXVi, 29). 


358 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


The resurrection of Jesus is considered as a harbinger of the 
resurrection of his disciples; but the Gospels expressly emphasize 
the bodily presence of Jesus after the resurrection. 

He meets two of his disciples after his resurrection at the village 
of Emmaus, has supper with them, and then disappears. 

“And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, 
and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with 
them, saying: The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to 
Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and 
how he was known of them in breaking of bread. And as they 
thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith 
unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and 
affrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said 
unto them: Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in 
your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: 
handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see 
me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his 
hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and 
wondered, he said unto them: Have ye here any meat? And 
they gave him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. 
And he took it and did eat before them” (Luke xxiv, 33 f.). 

In the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus gives evidence not only of 
his existence in the flesh after his resurrection, but also of a very 
healthy appetite. John reports that Jesus appeared to his dis- 
ciples in a room the doors of which were locked and was “handled” 
by the doubting Thomas, and then goes on to say: 

“After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples 
at the Sea of Tiberias; and on this wise showed he himself. There 
were together Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus and 
Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee and the sons of Zebedee, and two 
other of his disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go afishing. 
They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth and 
entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught 
nothing. But when the morning was now come Jesus stood on 
the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then 
Jesus saith unto them: Children, have ye any meat? They an- 
swered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH = 359 


side of the ship and ye shall find. They cast therefore and now 
they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. There- 
fore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter: It is the 
Lord. .. . As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of 
coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. . . . Jesus saith 
unto them: Come and dine. . . . This is now the third time that 
Jesus showed himself to his disciples, after that he was risen from 
the dead” (John xxi). 

The third time was probably the last. Perhaps it was after 
the strengthening by this fish breakfast that Jesus rose to Heaven 
in the imagination of the Evangelist, from whence he should 
return as the Messiah. 

While the Christians firmly maintained the bodily presence of 
the resurrected, they nevertheless had to assume that this body 
was of a different nature than the former body, if only for the 
sake of the life eternal. In a period which was so ignorant and 
so gullible as that of primitive Christianity, it is no source for 
surprise to find the most exaggerated notions flourishing on this 
subject in Christian as well as in Jewish minds. 

In Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, we find the view 
expressed that those of his comrades who will live to see the state 
of the future, as well as those that will be resurrected for the 
purpose, will both have a new and higher type of bodily existence: 

“Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep (until 
the Messiah comes), but we shall be changed, in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall 
sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we (the 
living) shall be changed” (xv, 51, 52). 

The Revelation of Saint John even speaks of two resurrections, 
the first of which is to occur after the overthrow of Rome: 

“And I saw thrones and they sat upon them, and judgment was 
given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded 
for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God. . . . And they 
lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years, but the rest of 
the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. 
This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath 
part in the first resurrection. On such the second death hath no 


360 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall 
reign with Him a thousand years” (xx, 4-6). 

But then there arises a rebellion of the nations of the earth 
against these holy men. The rebels are cast into a lake of fire 
and brimstone, and the dead, all of whom are now resurrected, are 
judged, the unrighteous being cast into the lake of fire, while the 
righteous shall no longer know death and shall rejoice in life in 
the new Jerusalem, to which the nations of the earth shall bring 
their splendors and their treasures. 

The reader will observe that Jewish nationalism here still peers 
through in the most naive manner. As a matter of fact, as we 
have already had occasion to observe, the pattern for the Chris- 
tian Revelation of Saint John is of Jewish origin, having been 
composed in the period of the siege of Jerusalem. 

Even after the fall of Jerusalem there were still Jewish Apoca- 
lypses which similarly expressed their messianic hopes; examples 
of these are Baruch and the Fourth Book of Ezra. 

Baruch announces that the Messiah will gather the peoples and 
bestow life upon them that submit to the descendants of Jacob 
and destroy the others who have oppressed Israel. Then the 
Messiah will seat himself on his throne and everlasting joy will 
prevail; nature will grant all gifts most generously, particularly 
wine. The dead shall be resurrected and men shall be organized 
quite differently. The righteous shall no longer be fatigued with 
labor, their bodies shall shine in splendor, but the unrighteous 
shall be even more ugly than before and shall be handed over to 
torture. 

The author of the Fourth Book of Ezra expounds similar 
thoughts. The Messiah will come, will live for four hundred 
years, and then die together with all the rest of mankind. There- 
upon there will follow a universal resurrection and a judgment 
in which the righteous shall have peace and sevenfold joy. 

We see how slight is the difference in all these points between 
the messianic hopes of the early Christians and those of the Jew- 
ish population as a whole. The Fourth Book of Ezra, with 
numerous later adornments, also attracted great attention in the 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 361 


Christian Church, and has been admitted to a number of Prot- 
estant translations of the Bible. 


b. The Ancestry of Jesus 


The early Christian conception of the Messiah coincided so 
completely with the Jewish conception at that time that the Gos- 
pels still lay the greatest stress on making Jesus appear as the de- 
scendant of David. For the Messiah, according to the Jewish 
notion, was to be of royal race. He is spoken of again and again 
as the “son of David” or the “son of God”, which amounts to 
the same thing in Hebrew. Thus the Second Book of Samuel 
(vii, 14) has God say to David: “I will be his (your descendant’s) 
father and he shall be my son.” 

And the King says in the Second Psalm: 

“The Lord hath said unto me: Thou art my Son; this day have 
I begotten thee.” 

It was therefore necessary to prove by means of a long ancestral 
tree that Joseph, the father of Jesus, was a descendant of David, 
and to cause Jesus, the Nazarene, to be born in Bethlehem, the 
city of David. In order to make this seem plausible, the most 
remarkable assertions were mobilized. We have already referred 
to the account given by Luke (ii, 1 ff.). 

‘And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree 
from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And 
this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) 
And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city. And Joseph 
also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, 
into the city of David which is called Bethlehem; (because he 
was of the house and lineage of David:) to be taxed with Mary 
his espoused wife, being great with child.” 

The author or authors of the Gospel of Saint Luke had a sus- 
picion that something was wrong and in their ignorance set down 
the baldest nonsense. Augustus never ordered a universal im- 
perial census. The reference is evidently to the census that was 
carried out by Quirinius in the year 7 A.D. in Judea, which had 
just become a Roman province. This was the first census of 
this kind in Judea. 


362 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


This mistake, however, is comparatively unimportant. But 
what are we to say of the notion that a general imperial census, or 
even a mere provincial census would require everyone to travel 
to his native town to be registered! Even today, in the age of 
railroads, such a regulation would produce an immense migration, 
the immensity of which would be exceeded only by its idiocy. 
As a matter of fact, the Roman census never required anyone to 
report except in his place of domicile, and only the men had to 
report in person. 

But the pious end would not have been served if the good 
Joseph had traveled alone to the city of David. The taking of 
the census is therefore also made to require each head of a 
family to travel to his ancestral home with child and bag and 
baggage in order that Joseph might be represented as dragging 
his wife thither in spite of the advanced stage of her pregnancy. 

But all this labor of love was lost. In fact, it even became a 
source of serious embarrassment for Christian thought, when the 
congregation began to outgrow the Jewish milieu. The pagans 
had no particular interest in David, and to be a descendant of 
David was no recommendation in their eyes. The Hellenistic and 
Roman mode of thought was much inclined to take the Fatherhood 
of God seriously, while to the Jews it had been merely a symbol 
of royal descent. It was nothing unusual among the Greeks and 
Romans, as we have seen, to represent a great man as the son 
of Apollo or some other god. 

But Christian thought, in these efforts to give the Messiah 
prestige in the eyes of the pagans, encountered a little difficulty: 
namely, monotheism, which it had borrowed from the Jews. The 
fact of a god’s having begotten a son is nothing out of the way in 
polytheism; you simply have one god more to deal with. But 
to have God beget another god, and yet have God remain a unit— 
this is not so easy to explain. And the matter was not simplified 
by isolating the creative power emanating from the godhead in 
the form of a special Holy Ghost. The task now was to accom- 
modate these three persons under a single conception that would 
embrace them all. This was a task which brought to grief even 
the most extravagant imagination and the most ingenious quib- 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 363 


bling. Therefore the Trinity became one of the mysteries that 
must simply be believed without being understood; a mystery that 
had to be believed for the very reason of its absurdity. 

There is no religion without its contradictions. No religion 
ever was born from a single brain as the result of a purely logical 
process: each religion is the product of manifold social influences, 
often extending through centuries, and reflecting the most varied 
historical situations. But it would be difficult to find any other 
religion so rich in contradictions and unreasonable assumptions 
as is the Christian, because hardly any other religion arose out of 
such strikingly different elements: Christianity was handed down 
by Judaism to the Romans, by proletarians to world rulers, by a 
communistic organization to an organization formed for the ex- 
ploitation of all classes. 

Yet, the union of father and son in a single person was not the 
only difficulty arising from the image of the Messiah, for Chris- 
tian thought, as soon as it came under the influence of a non- 
Jewish environment. 

What was to be done with Joseph’s paternity? It was no 
longer possible to have Mary conceive Jesus from her husband. 
And as God had cohabited with her not as a human being but 
in the form of a spirit, she must have remained a virgin. This 
meant relinquishing Jesus’s descent from David. But so great 
is the power of tradition in religion that in spite of all this the 
beautifully.devised ancestral tree of Joseph and the designation 
of Jesus as the son of David continued to be faithfully handed 
down. But to poor Joseph was now assigned the ungrateful task 
of living together with a Virgin without violating her virginity, 
and also, without even being in any way offended by her preg- 
nancy. 


c. Jesus as a Rebel 


Although the Christians of later days could not bear to relin- 
quish entirely the royal ancestry of their Messiah, in spite of his 
divine origin, they took all the greater pains to eliminate another 
characteristic of his Jewish birth, namely, his rebellious spirit. 

Christianity in the Second Century was more and more domi- 


364 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


nated by a passive obedience, which was quite different from the 
nature of the Judaism of the preceding century. We have already 
learned the rebellious character of those strata of the Jewish 
people that were waiting for the Messiah, particularly the pro- 
letarians of Jerusalem and the roving bands of Galilee, the very 
elements from which Christianity took its origin. We must there- 
fore assume at the outset that Christianity was characterized by 
violence in its beginnings. This assumption becomes a certainty 
when we discover traces of this condition in the Gospels, in spite 
of the fact that their later editors were most solicitously ambitious 
to eliminate any element that might give offense to those in power. 

Gentle and submissive though Jesus may appear as a rule, he 
occasionally delivers himself of a statement of an entirely different 
kind, a statement forcing us to assume that—whether he actually 
existed or was merely an ideal figure of men’s visions—he was, 
in the original tradition, a rebel who was crucified as an unsuc- 
cessful leader of an insurrection. Even the manner is noteworthy 
in which he occasionally speaks of legally righteous persons: 

“T came not to call the righteous (dikaiouc) but the sinners” 
(Mark ii, 17). 

Luther translates: “I came not to call the righteous but sinners 
to repentance.” Perhaps this was the variant in the manuscript 
he used. Certainly, Christians must have learned rather early 
how dangerous it would be to admit that Jesus summoned to him 
particularly those elements who were opposed to the laws. Saint 
Luke therefore added to the “calling”: to remorse (cic uetavoiav), 
which addition may also be found in many manuscripts of Saint 
Mark. But in altering the “summoning to himself” or “calling” 
(xakéw) to the words “calling to repentance” they robbed this 
sentence of any meaning at all. Who would think of calling the 
“righteous”, as Luther translates the Sikalouc, to repentance? 
Besides, such an alteration would contradict the context, for 
Jesus makes use of the word because he has been accused of 
eating in the company of persons who are despised, and of asso- 
ciating with them, not of conjuring them to alter their conduct 
of life. No one would have objected to his calling sinners “to 
repentance”. 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH — 365 


Bruno Bauer rightly remarks in his discussion of this passage: 

“Tn its original form this dictum is not even concerned with the 
question of whether the sinners actually will do penance, accept 
the call and earn their right to the Kingdom of Heaven by obedi- 
ence to him who preaches penance. Being sinners, they have 
privileges transcending those of the righteous. Being sinners, 
they are summoned to blessedness, given unconditionally favor- 
able treatment. The Kingdom of Heaven is created for the sin- 
ners and the call that goes out to them merely installs them in 
their property rights, inhering in them as sinners.” * 

This passage suggests a contempt for the traditional laws, and 
the words in which Jesus announces the coming of the Messiah 
are suggestive of violence: the existing Roman Empire will perish 
in an orgy of murder. And it appears the saints are not to play 
a passive role in this process. 

Jesus declares: 

“T am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be 
already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with and 
how am I straitened till it be accomplished! Suppose ye that I 
am come to give peace on earth? [ tell you, Nay, but rather 
division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house 
divided, three against two, and two against three” (Luke xii, 49). 
And in Matthew we read the plain words: 

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came 
not to send peace, but a sword” (x, 34). 

Having arrived at Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, he 
drives out the merchants and bankers from the Temple, the doing 
of which is inconceivable without the active assistance of a con- 
siderable body of people whom he has aroused. 

Not long after, at the Last Supper, immediately before the 
catastrophe, Jesus says to his disciples: 

“Now, he who has a purse, let him take it and also a pocket, 
and he who has it not, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. 
For I say unto you it must now be fulfilled in me what is written, 
namely: And he will be counted among the lawless (davoywv). 
For what is written of me shall be fulfilled. They said, however: 


1 Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte thres Ursprungs, 1851, p. 248. 


366 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Lord, here are two swords. And he said to them, That is suffi- 
cient.” 

Immediately thereafter, on the Mount of Olives, the conflict 
takes place with the armed power of the state. Jesus is about to 
be arrested. 

“And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out 
his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high 
priest’s, and smote off his ear.” 

But in this Gospel, Jesus is represented as being opposed to 
all bloodshed, consents peaceably to be chained, and is thereupon 
executed, while his companions remain absolutely unmolested. 

In the form in which we have it, this story is a most remarkable 
one, full of contradictory statements that must originally have 
been quite different. 

Jesus calls for swords as if the hour for action had come; his 
faithful set out armed with swords—and at the very moment 
when they encounter the enemy and draw their swords, Jesus 
suddenly declares that he is opposed in principle to all use of 
force—of course this statement is particularly sharp in the case 
of Matthew: 

“Put up again thy sword into his place: for all them that take 
the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I 
cannot now pray to my Father and he shall presently give me 
more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the 
scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” 

But if Jesus was opposed on principle to any use of force, why 
did he call for swords? Why did he permit his friends to bear 
arms when they went about with him? We can only understand 
this contradiction by assuming that the Christian tradition in its 
original form must have contained a report of a carefully planned 
coup d’état, in which Jesus was captured, a coup d’état for which 
the time had seemed to be ripe after he had successfully driven 
the bankers and sellers out of the Temple. The later editors did 
not dare to throw out this report, deeply rooted in tradition, in 
its entirety. They mutilated it by making the use of force appear 
to be an act undertaken by the apostles against the will of Jesus. 

It is perhaps not unimportant to recall that this collision took 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 367 


place on the Mount of Olives. This was the indicated starting 
point for any coup d’état against Jerusalem. 

Let us record, for instance, the report in Josephus concerning 
the unsuccessful insurrection led by an Egyptian Jew in the time 
of the Procurator Felix (52-60 A.D.).” 

This man came from the desert to the Mount of Olives with 
thirty thousand men in order to attack the city of Jerusalem, 
drive out the Roman garrison and seize power. Felix gave battle 
to the Egyptian and scattered his adherents; the Egyptian him- 
self appears to have escaped. . 

Josephus’s history swarms with similar events. They are in- 
dicative of the mood of the Jewish population in the time of 
Christ. An attempted insurrection by the Galilean prophet Jesus 
would be not at all in contradiction with this mood. 

If we are to regard his enterprise as an attempt of this kind, 
we can also understand Judas’s treason, which is woven in with 
the report we are now discussing. 

According to the version that has been preserved, Judas be- 
trayed Jesus by means of a kiss, thus designating him to the 
detectives as the man to be arrested. But this operation would 
have no meaning at all. Jesus was well known in Jerusalem, 
according to the Gospels; he preached publicly every day; he 
was received by the masses with open arms; and yet we are sud- 
denly to believe that it was necessary for Judas to point him 
out, in order that he might be distinguished from his adherents. 
A somewhat parallel situation would be to behold the Berlin 
police paying a stool-pigeon in order that he might point out to 
them who Bebel is. 

But the matter becomes entirely different, if we are dealing with 
a carefully elaborated coup d’état. Such a situation would involve 
something worth betraying, a secret worth buying. If the report 
of the coup d’état that had been planned must be eliminated from 
the story, the tale of Judas’s treason also becomes pointless. But 
as this act of treason was apparently too well known among the 
comrades, and their hatred of the betrayer too great, it was im- 
possible for the evangelist to eliminate this event entirely. But 

2See Pages 302-303 of this book. 


368 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


he was now obliged to construct a new act of treason out of his 
own imagination, in which he did not meet with much success. 

Not less unhappily invented than the present version of Judas’s 
treason is that of the capture of Jesus. It is just he that is 
arrested, although he is represented as preaching the use of peace- 
ful methods, while the apostles who have drawn their swords 
and used them are not at all molested. In fact, Peter, who has 
“smitten off” Malchus’s ear, walks after the policemen and takes 
a seat in the high priest’s yard and converses peaceably with them. 
Just imagine a man in Berlin opposing by force the arrest of a 
comrade, discharging a revolver in this situation, thus injuring a 
policeman, and then walking along quietly, chatting amiably with 
the police, and then sitting down with them in the station-house 
to warm up and drink a glass of beer with them! 

It would have been impossible to invent more stupid situations. 
But it is precisely this awkwardness that must show us that an 
effort is being made to conceal something that must be eliminated 
at any price. A natural action, one easily understood, a hand-to- 
hand conflict ending in a defeat because of Judas’s treason, and 
in the capture of the leader, becomes an absolutely senseless and 
incomprehensible process, which has come to pass only “that the 
scriptures might be fulfilled.” 

The execution of Jesus, which is easy to understand if he was 
a rebel, now becomes a completely incomprehensible act of sense- 
less malice, which even succeeds in gaining its point in opposition 
to the Roman governor, who would liberate Jesus. This is an 
accumulation of unreasonable situations that can only be ex- 
plained by the need felt by the later editors to whitewash the 
real event. 

Even the Essenes, who were peaceable and opposed to all con- 
flict, were carried away at the time by the general wave of pa- 
triotism. We find Essenes among the Jewish generals in the last 
great war against the Romans. Thus, Josephus reports of the 
beginning of the war: 

“The Jews had chosen three mighty generals, who were en- 
dowed not only with bodily strength and bravery, but also with 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 369 


intelligence and wisdom, Niger of Pera, Sylas of Babylon, and 
John, the Essenian.” * 

The assumption that the execution of Jesus was due to the fact 
that he was a rebel is therefore not only the sole assumption 
which can make the indications in the Gospel clear, but it is also 
completely in accordance with the character of the epoch and 
of the locality. From the time to which Jesus’s death is com- 
monly assigned, up to the destruction of Jerusalem, there was no 
end of restlessness in that city. Street fights were a very common 
thing, as well as executions of individual insurgents. Such a 
street fight waged by a little group of proletarians, followed by 
the crucifixion of its ringleader, who was a native of Galilee, 
always a rebellious province, might very well indeed have made 
a profound impression on all the participants who survived, while 
history itself might perhaps not have taken the trouble to record 
such an every-day event. 

In view of the rebellious agitation in which the entire Jewish 
race was living at that period, it was natural for the sect which 
had brought about this attempted insurrection to emphasize it 
for purposes of propaganda, thus giving it a firm place in tradition 
and naturally also somewhat exaggerating and adorning such de- 
tails as the personality of the hero. 

But the situation changed when Jerusalem had been destroyed. 
With the destruction of the Jewish community, the last remnants 
of the democratic opposition that had still maintained themselves 
in the Roman Empire were also destroyed. At about this time 
the civil wars in the Roman Empire itself cease. 

In the two centuries lying between the Maccabzans and the 
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the eastern basin of the Medi- 
terranean had been in a constant state of unrest, one government 
after another collapsed, one nation after another lost its independ- 
ence or its dominant position. But the power which directly or 
indirectly was behind all these convulsions, namely, the Roman 
State, was at the same period torn by the most gigantic disasters, 
from the Gracchi to Vespasian, which emanated more and more 
from the armies and their leaders. At this epoch, in which the 


8 The Jewish Wars, iii, 2, 1. 


370 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


expectation of the Messiah was developed and solidified, no politi- 
cal organism seemed more than provisional, while political 
revolution seemed that which was inevitable, that which was 
to be expected. This period ended under Vespasian. Under his 
reign, the military monarchy finally achieved the financial ar- 
rangement that was needed by the Imperator in order to preclude 
in advance any activity of a possible rival in wooing the favor 
of the soldiers and thus for a long period to stop military rebel- 
lions at their source. 

From this time on we have the “Golden Era” of the Empire, 
a general condition of internal peace lasting more than a century, 
from Vespasian (69 A.D.) to Commodus (180 A.pD.). While for 
the two preceding centuries unrest had been the rule, quiet 
was the watchword of this century. Political revolution, formerly 
a natural thing, now became most unnatural. Submission to the 
imperial power, patient obedience, now seemed not only a com- 
mandment of wisdom to’the cowardly but became more and more 
deep-rooted as a moral obligation. 

This naturally had its effect on the Christian congregation. 
The latter no longer had any use for the rebellious Messiah, who 
had been acceptable to Jewish thought. Even the moral feeling 
of the congregation rebelled against this rebellious Messiah. But 
as the congregation had become accustomed to regard Jesus as 
its God, as the incorporation of all the virtues, the transformation 
did not involve a relinquishment of the rebellious Jesus and the 
substitution of an ideal image of another personality, more adapted 
to the new conditions, but simply meant a gradual elimination 
of all rebellious elements from the image of the Jesus God, thus 
transforming the aggressively rebellious Jesus gradually into a 
passive figure, who had been murdered not because of an insur- 
rection but simply because of his infinite goodness and sanctity, 
and the viciousness and malice of treacherous enviers. 

Fortunately the retouching was done so unskillfully that traces 
of the original pigments may still be detected, permitting us to 
make inferences as to the entire picture. It is precisely because 
these remnants do not harmonize with the later retouching that 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 371 


we can the more surely infer that the former are genuine, and 
represent the actual original report. 

In this respect, as well as in the others already discussed, the 
image of the Messiah in the first Christian congregation fully 
corresponded with the original Jewish image. Only the later 
Christian congregation began to introduce divergences. But there 
are two points in which the image of the Messiah in the Christian 
congregation differs at the very outset from the Jewish Messiah. 


d. The Resurrection of the Crucified 


There was no lack of Messiahs at the time of Jesus, particu- 
larly in Galilee, where prophets and leaders of bands arose at 
every moment, revealing themselves as redeemers and the anointed 
of the Lord. But when such a redeemer had succumbed to the 
Roman power, been taken captive, been crucified or killed, his 
messianic rdle was ended, and he was naturally regarded as a false 
prophet and a false Messiah. The true prophet was still to come. 

But the Christian congregation stood by its champion. For 
them also the Messiah in all his glory was still to come. But 
the Messiah still to come was none other than he who had already 
been, namely, the Crucified, who had arisen three days after his 
death and, having appeared to his adherents, ascended heaven- 
ward. 

This conception was peculiar to the Christian congregation. 
What was its origin? 

According to the primitive Christian conception it was the 
miracle of the resurrection of Christ on the third day after his 
crucifixion which proved his divine character and caused expecta- 
tions to be formed of his return from heaven. Our present-day 
theologians have not advanced beyond this point. Of course the 
“liberal spirits” among them no longer take the resurrection lit- 
erally. For the latter, Jesus did not really arise from the dead, 
but his disciples believed they saw him in their ecstatic raptures 
after his death, and therefore inferred that he was of divine origin: 

“Therefore, we will have to regard the first appearance of 
Christ which Peter experienced in the same way as that of Paul 
who saw the celestial light-appearance of Christ in a sudden 


372 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ecstatic vision on the way to Damascus—a physical experience, 
in no way an incomprehensible miracle, but psychologically con- 
ceivable according to many analogous experiences in all ages. . . . 
Following other analogies, it is also easy to understand that this 
experience of inspired vision did not confine itself to Peter, but 
repeated itself soon for the other disciples and, finally, for assem- 
blages of believers. . . . The historical basis of the disciples’ 
belief in the resurrection we find in the ecstatic visionary experi- 
ences emanating from an individual and soon convincing all; in 
these experiences they believed that they saw the crucified master 
alive and raised to heavenly glory. At home in the world of the 
miraculous, the imagination wove the garment to clothe that which 
was moving and suffusing the soul. At bottom, the moving force 
of the resurrection of Jesus in their faith was nothing more than 
the ineffaceable impression which one person had made upon 
them; their love and their confidence in him were stronger than 
death. This miracle of love and not a miracle of omnipotence 
was the foundation of the resurrection-belief in the early-congre- 
gation. Therefore it did not stop at passing emotions, but the 
newly awakened, inspired belief compelled action; the disciples 
recognized their life-task. They were to proclaim to their com- 
patriots that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had delivered up to 
their enemies, was the Messiah; that God had shown it the more 
by the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to heaven, and that 
Jesus would soon return to take up his messianic government of 
earth.” * 

The above exposition would have us accept the dissemination 
of the Christian congregation’s faith in the Messiah, and with it 
the entire enormous historical phenomenon of Christianity, as 
consequences of an accidental hallucination of a single mortal. 

It is by no means impossible that one of the apostles may have 
had a vision of the Crucified; nor is it impossible that there were 
many persons who believed in this vision, as the epoch was one 
that was quite credulous and the Jewish people were profoundly 
impressed with the faith in the resurrection. Awakenings from 


40. Pfleiderer, Christian Origins, New York, B. W. Huebsch, 1906, pp. 
137-139. 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH = 373 


the dead were by no means considered inconceivable. Let us 
add a few examples to those we have already given. 

In Matthew, Jesus prescribes to the Apostles their activities: 

“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out 
devils” (x, 8). The raising of the dead is here included in the 
most matter-of-fact way in an enumeration of the daily duties of 
the apostles, together with the healing of the sick. An admonish- 
ing addition warns them against accepting pay for this work. 
Jesus, or rather the author of the Gospel, considered raisings from 
the dead for a fee, in other words, conducted as a business, to be 
quite within the realm of possibility. 

Quite characteristic is the story of the resurrection as reported 
in Matthew. The tomb of Jesus is guarded by soldiers, so that 
the apostles may not steal the corpse and spread the report that 
he has risen. But the stone is rolled from the opening of the 
grave to the accompaniment of flashes of lightning and earth- 
quakes, and Jesus arises. 

“Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came 
into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things that 
were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and 
had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, say- 
ing: Say ye, his disciples came by night, and stole him away while 
we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will per- 
suade him, and clear you. So they took the money and did as 
they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among 
the Jews until this day.” (xxviii, 11 ff.) 

These Christians therefore imagined that the resurrection of a 
man dead and buried for three days would not make so profound 
an impression upon eye-witnesses as to render it necessary to 
give more than a generous bribe in order to impose silence upon 
them, and even to induce them to spread a report that was the 
opposite of the truth. 

We may readily believe that authors who held views like those 
expressed here by the evangelist were capable of accepting the 
fable of the resurrection without the slightest hesitation. 

But this does not dispose of the entire question. This gulli- 
bility, this firm faith in the possibility of the resurrection, was 


374 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


not a characteristic peculiar to the Christian congregation, as the 
latter shared it with the entire Jewish population at the time, at 
least that portion of the Jewish population which was expecting a 
Messiah. Why did only the Christian congregation have a vision 
of the resurrection of its Messiah? Why not also the adherents 
of one of the other Messiahs who suffered a martyr’s death in 
that era? 

Our theologians will reply that we must explain this by means 
of the particularly profound impression made by the personality 
of Jesus, an impression that none of the other Messiahs had been 
capable of making. But in contradiction to this statement is the 
fact that Jesus’s activities, which according to all indications 
lasted but a short time, left no traces in the masses, with the 
result that not a single contemporary recorded them. But other 
Messiahs continued fighting for a long time against the Romans 
and temporarily achieved great successes against the latter, suc- 
cesses that have been recorded in history; was it possible that 
these Messiahs made less of an impression than Jesus? But let 
us assume that Jesus, while incapable of fascinating the masses, 
was nevertheless able to leave behind ineradicable impressions 
among a few of his adherents, owing to the power of his per- 
sonality. This would at most explain why the faith in Jesus con- 
tinued among his personal friends, and not why it attained the 
force of propaganda among persons who had not known him, and 
whom his personality could not influence. If it was only the 
personal impression made by Jesus that produced the faith in his 
resurrection and his divine mission, this faith would necessarily 
become weaker as personal recollection of him died away, and 
the number of people who had been in personal contact with him 
decreased. 

Posterity has no laurels for dramatic performers,’ and in this 
respect the comedian and the clergyman have much in common. 
What is true of the actor is also true of the preacher, if he is only 
a preacher, and operates only through his personality, leaving 
no writings behind that may survive his personal life. THis ser- 


5“Dem Mimen flicht die Nachwelt keine Kringe.’—Schiller, Prologue to 
Wallensteins Lager. 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH 375 


mons may be ever so profoundly effective, may elevate ever so 
powerfully, they cannot produce the same impression on those 
that do not hear them, on those who obtain them only by hearsay. 
And his personality will not have any effect on such persons at 
all; their imagination will not be stimulated by him. No one 
can leave behind a memory of his personality beyond the circle 
of those who have been in personal contact with him, unless he 
has produced a creation which is capable of making an impression 
quite apart from his person, be it an artistic creation, an edifice, 
a reproduction, a musical composition, a work of literature; or a 
scientific achievement, a methodically arranged collection of data, 
a theory, an invention, a discovery; or, finally, a political or social 
institution or organization of some kind or other, produced by 
him or at least with his distinguished codperation. 

As long as such a product endures and has its effect, an interest 
in the personality of the creator will also endure. In fact, while 
such a creation may have been practically ignored during the life- 
time of its producer, it will grow after his death and begin to 
achieve significance, as is the case with many discoveries, inven- 
tions and organizations; it is quite possible that the interest in 
its creator may only begin after his death, and may continue 
increasing more and more. The less attention was paid to him 
when alive, the less actually known about his person, the more 
will this ignorance stimulate the imagination, if his creation is a 
mighty one, the more will this personality be surrounded by a 
halo of anecdotes and legends. In fact, man’s love of causal 
relations, which seeks in every social event—and at one time 
also in every natural event—an active personality behind it, this 
love of causal relations is strong enough to cause the invention 
of the originator of any work that has become of great impor- 
tance, or at least an association of this work with some name that 
has been handed down, in case the actual originator has been 
forgotten, or, as is so frequently the case, if it is the product of 
the codperation of so many talents, none of which completely 
overshadows the others—as to make it impossible from the start 
to name a specific originator. 

It is not in his personality, but in the creation that is connected 


376 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


with his name, that we must seek the reason why the messianic 
activity of Jesus did not have the fate of the similar activities of 
Judas and Theudas and the other Messiahs of that time. Ecstatic 
faith in the personality of the prophet, and the love of miracles, 
rapture, the faith in the resurrection—all these we find among 
the adherents of the other Messiahs as well as among the adher- 
ents of Jesus. We may not seek the cause for the differentiation 
of one of them in that which all have in common. While it may 
be natural for theologians, even the most liberal, to assume that 
though all the miracles may be abandoned that are told of Jesus, 
Jesus himself remains a miracle, a superman, such as the world 
has never seen—we are forced to deny even this miracle. The 
only point of difference between Jesus and the other Messiahs is 
in the fact that the latter left nothing behind them in which their 
personality might be preserved, while Jesus bequeathed an organ- 
ization with elements that were excellently calculated to hold 
together his adherents and attract increasing numbers of new 
adherents. 

The other Messiahs had merely gathered together bands for 
the purpose of insurrection; the bands dispersed after the failure 
of the insurrection. If Jesus had done no more than this, his 
name would have disappeared without a trace after his crucifixion. 
But Jesus was not merely a rebel, he was also a representative 
and champion, perhaps even the founder of an organization which 
survived him and continued to increase in numbers and in 
strength. 

To be sure, the traditional assumption is that the congregation 
of Christ was not organized until after his death by the Apostles. 
But nothing obliges us to accept this assumption, which is, more- 
over, very implausible. For this assumption takes for granted 
no less a condition than that immediately after Jesus’s death 
his adherents introduced into his doctrine an entirely new ele- 
ment, hitherto ignored and not desired by him, and that those 
who had remained unorganized until that time proceeded to take 
the step of organization, to which their teacher had been opposed, 
at the very moment when they had suffered a defeat that was 
strong enough to have destroyed even a well-knit organization. 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH = 377 


To judge by the analogy of other similar organizations with whose 
beginnings we are better acquainted, we should rather assume 
that communistic beneficiary organizations of the proletarians of 
Jerusalem, imbued with hopes for the coming of the Messiah, had 
existed even before the time of Jesus, and that a bold agitator 
and rebel named Jesus, coming from Galilee, merely became their 
most prominent champion and martyr. 

According to John, the Twelve Apostles had a common treasury 
while Jesus was still alive. But Jesus also demands that all his 
other disciples surrender all their property. 

Nor do we read anywhere in the Acts of the Apostles that the 
Apostles and the congregation were not organized until after the 
death of Jesus. We find them already organized at this time, and 
holding their membership meetings and discharging their func- 
tions. The first mention of communism in the Acts of the Apostles 
is the following: 

“And they continued stedfastly (hoav Se npookaptepotvtec) 
in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, 
and in prayers” (ii, 42). In other words, they continued to take 
their meals together as before, also continuing other communistic 
practices. If these practices had not been introduced until after 
the death of Jesus, this wording could not have been used. 

It was the organization of the congregation that served as a 
bond to hold together Jesus’s adherents after his death, and as 
a means of keeping alive the memory of their crucified champion, 
who according to tradition had announced himself to be the 
Messiah. With the increase of the organization, as it grew more 
and more powerful, its martyr necessarily occupied the imagina- 
tion of its members more and more, and they necessarily became 
more and more averse to regarding the crucified Messiah as a 
wrong Messiah, more and more impelled to recognize him as the 
true Messiah in spite of his death, as the Messiah who would 
come again in all his splendor; it became more natural for them 
to believe in his resurrection, and the belief in the messianic 
character and in the resurrection of the Crucified became the 
characteristic mark of the organization, distinguishing it from 


378 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


other believers in the Messiah. If the faith in the resurrection 
of the Messiah had arisen from personal impressions, it would 
necessarily have become fainter and fainter in the course of time, 
being more and more obliterated by other impressions, and would 
finally disappear altogether with the death of those who had 
known Jesus. But if the faith in the resurrection of the Crucified 
was a result of the influence of his organization, then this faith 
would become all the more solid and enthusiastic with the in- 
crease in the organization, the less it positively knew concerning 
the person of Jesus, the less the imagination of his worshipers 
was fettered by definite details. 

It was not the faith in the resurrection of the Crucified which 
created the Christian congregation and gave it its strength, but, 
on the contrary, it was the vigor and strength of the congregation 
that created the belief in the continued life of the Messiah. 

There was nothing in the belief in the resurrection of the 
Messiah that had been crucified, which would be in contradiction 
with the Jewish philosophy of life. We have seen how thoroughly 
that philosophy was permeated with the belief in the resurrection; 
but we must not overlook the fact that the entire messianic 
literature of the Jews was shot through with the thought that 
the future glory could be obtained only at the price of the 
suffering and death of the righteous, a thought which was a 
natural consequence of the trials and tribulations to which the 
Jews were then exposed. 

The faith in the crucified Messiah gave every indication, there- 
fore, of becoming simply one of the numerous variations of the 
messianic prophecy among the Jews of that day; it might never 
have amounted to more than that. But it was saved from this 
fate—and from the resulting oblivion—by the fact that the 
foundation on which it rested was a foundation that necessarily 
involved the development of an opposition to the Jews. This 
foundation, which was the life and vigor of the communistic 
organization of the proletariat, was closely connected with the 
peculiar quality of the messianic expectations of the communistic 
proletarians in Jerusalem. 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH = 3/9 


e. The International Redeemer 


The messianic expectations of the rest of the Jews were purely 
national in character, including those of the Zealots. They in- 
volved: a subjection of the other nations under Jewish world 
dominion, which was to replace Roman world rule; the taking 
of revenge against the nations that were oppressing and mal- 
treating the Jews. But the messianic expectations of the Christian 
‘congregation were quite different. This congregation also was 
filled with Jewish patriotism and hostility to the Romans; the 
throwing off of the foreign yoke was the necessary preliminary 
to any liberation, but the adherents of the Christian congregation 
did not content themselves with that. They did not plan to throw 
off only the yoke of foreign rulers, but of a// rulers, including those 
at home. They summoned to themselves only the weary and 
heavy-laden; the day of judgment was to be a day of revenge on 
all the rich and powerful. 

The passion which animated them was not race hatred but class 
hatred; this characteristic was the germ of their separation from 
the rest of the Jews, who were unified by a national spirit. But 
this element also was a germ of rapprochement to the rest of the 
world, the non-Jewish world. The national theory of the Messiah 
remained limited to the Jewish world, being rejected by the rest 
of the world, whose subjection was a portion of this idea. 

Class hatred against the rich as well as proletarian solidarity 
were thoughts that were by no means acceptable to Jewish pro- 
letarians only. A messianic hope that involved a redemption of 
the poor must necessarily have found a willing ear among the 
poor of all nations. Only the social Messiah, not the national 
Messiah, could transcend the bounds of Judaism. Only such a 
Messiah could victoriously survive the terrible catastrophe that 
befell the Jewish community, culminating in the destruction of 
Jerusalem. 

On the other hand, a communistic organization could not main- 
tain itself in the Roman Empire, except in a region where this 
organization was strengthened by the faith in the coming of the 
Messiah and in his saving of those that were oppressed and mal- 


380 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


treated. Practically, these communistic organizations, as we shall 
learn later, were based on an association for mutual aid. The 
need for such organizations had become universal in the Roman 
Empire beginning with the First Century of our era, and was the 
more vividly felt as the general poverty was increasing and as the 
last remnants of the traditional primitive communism were dis- 
solving. But a suspicious despotism was putting down all forms 
of organizations; we have seen that Trajan was afraid even of 
the volunteer fire organizations. Caesar had still spared the 
Jewish organizations, but later these also lost their privileged 
position. 

The mutual aid organizations could not continue to exist except 
as secret bodies. But would anyone consent to risk his life for 
the profit of mere aids in illness? Or who would risk his life 
through a feeling of solidarity with his comrades at a time when 
almost all public spirit had been extinguished? Whatever was 
left of such public spirit, or of devotion to the common weal, 
did not anywhere encounter a great, elevating idea like that of 
a messianic renewal of the world, which means, of society. And 
the more selfish among the proletarians, those that joined the 
mutual aid associations for the sake of personal advantage, were 
reassured as to the endangering of their persons by the idea of a 
personal resurrection with a subsequent rich reward; an idea 
which would not have been necessary in order to keep up the 
morale of the persecuted in an age whose conditions goaded the 
social instincts and feelings to the utmost, so that the individual 
felt himself irresistibly forced to obey them, even to the point 
of endangering his own advantage, his own life. The idea of a 
personal resurrection was, on the other hand, indispensable in 
the conduct of a dangerous struggle against powerful forces, in 
an age in which all the social instincts and feelings had been 
depressed to an extremely low point by the progressive social 
dissolution, not only among the ruling classes, but also among 
the oppressed and exploited. 

Only in the communistic form of the Christian congregation, 
in that of the crucified Messiah, could the idea of the Messiah 
strike root outside of Judaism. Only through faith in the Messiah 


THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF THE MESSIAH — 381 


and in the resurrection could the communistic organization main- 
tain and extend itself in the Roman Empire as a secret body. 
But when united, these two factors—communism and the faith 
in the Messiah—became irresistible. What the Jews had vainly 
hoped for from their Messiah of royal lineage was accomplished 
by the crucified Messiah who had issued forth from the pro- 
letariat: he subjected Rome, he brought the Caesars to their 
knees, conquered the world. But he did not conquer the world 
for the proletariat. In its victorious course, the proletarian, com- 
munistic, beneficial organization became transformed into the 
most tremendous instrument of domination and exploitation in 
the world. This dialectic process is not an entirely new one. 
The crucified Messiah was neither the first nor the last conqueror 
who finally turned the armies that had won his victories, to fight 
their own people, utilizing them for their subjection and enslave- 


ment. 
Caesar and Napoleon also had their origins in democratic 


victories. 


III. JEWISH CHRISTIANS AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 


a. The Agitation Among the Pagans 


TuE first communistic congregation of the Messiah was formed 
in Jerusalem; we have not the slightest reason to doubt the state- 
ment to this effect in the Acts of the Apostles. But congregations 
soon arose in other cities having a Jewish proletariat. Between 
Jerusalem and the other portions of the Empire, particularly its 
eastern half, there was of course a very active traffic, if only 
because of the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of 
pilgrims, who annually made pilgrimages to that city. And nu- 
merous propertyless beggars without family or home were cease- 
lessly traveling from place to place, as is still the case in eastern 
Europe, staying at each place until the local charity was ex- 
hausted. Such is the meaning of the instructions given by Jesus 
to his apostles: 

“Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man 
by the way. And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say: Peace 
be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace 
shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again. And in the 
same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: 
for the laborer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. 
And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such 
things as are set before you: and heal the sick that are therein, 
and say unto them: The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. 
But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, 
go your ways, out into the streets of the same, and say: Even 
the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off 
against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom 
of God is come nigh unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall 
be more tolerable on that day for Sodom, than for that city” 
(Luke x, 4-13). 


The final threat which the evangelist puts in Jesus’s mouth is 
382 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 383 


typical of the spitefulness of the beggar who has been deceived 
in his expectations of alms. He would most like to be requited 
by seeing the entire city go up in flames. But in this case the 
Messiah is to play the incendiary for him. 

All the propertyless agitators of the new organization who thus 
wandered about were considered apostles, not only the twelve 
whose names have been handed down as installed by Jesus to be 
proclaimers of his word. The already mentioned Didache (the 
teaching of the twelve apostles) still speaks in the middle of 
the Second Century of apostles who are active in the congregation. 

Such traveling “beggars and conspirators,” who held themselves 
to be full of the holy spirit, brought the principles of the new 
proletarian organization, the ‘joyous message” of the evangel * 
from Jerusalem to the neighboring Jewish communities and ulti- 
mately as far as Rome. But as soon as the Gospel left the soil 
of Palestine, it entered an entirely different social environment, 
which placed an entirely different stamp upon it. 

Together with the members of the Jewish community, the 
Apostles found another group, in close contact with these mem- 
bers, the associates of the Jews, the ‘“god-fearing”’ pagans 
(ceBopevor), who worshiped the Jewish God, attended the syna- 
gogues, but were unable to go so far as to accept all the Jewish 
customs. At most they would subject themselves to the ceremony 
of immersion or baptism; but they would have nothing to do 
with the circumcision or with the dietary laws, the observance 
of the Sabbath, and other externals which would have cut them 
off entirely from their “pagan” surroundings. 

The social content of the Gospel must have found ready accept- 
ance in the proletarian strata of such “god-fearing pagans.” 
It is they who transplanted it into other non-Jewish proletarian 
groups, which offered a favorable soil for the doctrine of the 
crucified Messiah, at least to the extent that it promised a social 
transformation and immediately organized institutions for the 
giving of aid. But these classes had no sympathy for all the 


1 Evangel (gospel) is derived from e), good, bringing good fortune, and 
ayyéd\rAw, angello, to announce, report. 


384 7OUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


specifically Jewish customs; in fact, regarded them with aversion 
and contempt. 

The more the new teaching spread in the Jewish communities 
outside of Palestine, the more evident it necessarily became that 
it would gain immensely in propaganda power if it should slough 
off its Jewish peculiarities, cease to be national, and become ex- 
clusively social in nature. 

The man who first recognized this condition and advocated it 
energetically is called Saul, a Jew of whom tradition says that 
he did not come from Palestine, but from the Jewish congregation 
of a Greek city, Tarsus, in Cilicia. A fiery spirit, he first threw 
himself with all his strength into an advocacy of Phariseeism, 
and as a Pharisee he fought the Christian congregation, which 
was Closely related to Zealotism, until, according to the tale, he 
was suddenly convinced of the error of his ways by a vision, with 
the result that he went to the opposite extreme. He joined the 
Christian congregation, but immediately appeared in it as one 
in favor of the overthrow of the established views, since he de- 
manded that the new doctrine be propagated among non-Jews, 
and that it be made unnecessary for the latter to accept Judaism. 

The fact that he altered his Hebrew name of Saul into the Latin 
Paul is typical of his tendencies. Such changes of name were 
frequently undertaken by Jews who wished to play a role in non- 
Jewish circles. If Manasse should change his name to Menelaus, 
why should not Saul call himself Paul? 

The historically correct portion of the story of Paul can prob- 
ably not be determined at this date with any certainty. As in all 
matters concerning personal histories, the New Testament here 
again is a very unreliable source, full of contradictions and im- 
possible tales of miracles. But the personal acts of Paul are a 
subsidiary matter. The important point is his opposition in prin- 
ciple to the former views of the Christian congregation. This 
opposition arose from the nature of the case; it was unavoidable, 
and no matter how much the Acts of the Apostles may exaggerate 
individual events, the fact of the conflict between these two tend- 
encies within the congregation has not been concealed from us. 
The Acts of the Apostles itself is a polemic product, the result 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 385 


of this conflict, written for the purpose of winning friends for 
the Pauline position, and also of hushing up the opposition be- 
tween the two tendencies. 

At first the new tendency probably was very modest, demanding 
only tolerance in certain points which the mother congregation 
could have afforded to overlook. 

At least that is what seems probable from the report in the 
Acts of the Apostles, which, we must admit, however, painted the 
situation in rather rosy colors and pretended that peace reigned 
where actually a savage struggle was in progress.” 

Thus, Acts relate, for example, from the time of Paul’s propa- 
ganda activity in Syria: 

“And certain men which came down from Judea taught the 
brethren, and said: Except ye be circumcised after the manner 
of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When therefore Paul and Barna- 
bas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they 
determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, 
should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this 
question. And being brought on their way by the church, they 
passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of 
the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. 
And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of 
the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all 
things that God had done with them. But there rose up certain 
of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying: That it was 
needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the 
law of Moses” (Acts of the Apostles xv, 1-5). 

The Apostles and Elders, in other words, the executive com- 
mittee of the party, now assemble; Peter as well as James deliver 
conciliatory speeches, and it is finally resolved to send Judas 
Barsabas and Silas, likewise members of the executive committee, 
to Syria, for the purpose of proclaiming to the brethren there 
(Acts of the Apostles xv, 28, 29): 

“For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon 
you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye 


2Cf. Bruno Bauer, Die Apostelgeschichte, eine Ausgleichung des Paulinis- 
mus und des Judentums innerhalb der christlichen Kirche, 1850. 


386 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from 
things strangled, and from fornication.” The executive com- 
mittee thus renounced the circumcision of the pagan proselytes, 
but the charitable practices might not be neglected: ‘Only they 
would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also 
was forward to do.” Such is the Apostle’s report in his Epistle 
to the Galatians (ii, 10). 

The system of aids was dear to the hearts both of the Jewish 
Christians and the pagan Christians, and did not constitute a 
subject of dispute between them. Therefore it is so little men- 
tioned in their literature, which was concerned almost exclusively 
with polemic aims. But it would be wrong to assume from these 
infrequent mentions that this charitable activity played no part 
in primitive Christianity. It is true it did not play a part in the 
latter’s internal disagreements. 

These disagreements went on in spite of all efforts at con- 
ciliation. 

In the above quoted Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians, we 
already find the advocates of circumcision accused of acting from 
opportunistic considerations: 

‘“‘As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they 
constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer 
persecution for the cross of Christ” (vi, 12). 

After the above-mentioned congress at Jerusalem, the Acts of 
the Apostles describe Paul as undertaking an agitational tour 
through Greece, the object of which is again propaganda among 
the pagans. After his return to Jerusalem, he reports to his 
comrades concerning the success of his mission. 

“And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto 
him: Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are 
which believe; and they are all zealous of the law: and they are 
informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among 
the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to 
circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs” 
(Acts of the Apostles, xxi, 20-21). 

Paul is now requested to clear himself of this charge and to 
give evidence that he is still a pious Jew. He declares he is 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 387 


ready to do this, but is prevented from carrying out his intention 
by a sudden attack made on him by the Jews, who wish to kill 
him as a traitor to their nation. The Roman authorities place 
him under a kind of protective arrest and finally send him to 
Rome, where he is enabled to carry on his agitation absolutely 
unmolested, which was far from being the case in Jerusalem: 
“Preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which 
concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man for- 
bidding him” (Acts xxviii, 31). 


b. The Opposition between Jews and Christians 


It was natural that the pagan Christians should proclaim their 
standpoint more emphatically when their numbers increased. The 
opposition therefore was bound to become sharper and sharper. 

The longer this opposition endured, the more numerous the 
surfaces of friction, the more hostile was necessarily the attitude 
of these two tendencies toward each other. This condition was 
further sharpened by the aggravation of the contrast between 
the Jews and the nations in whose midst they lived, in the decades 
just preceding the destruction of Jerusalem. It was precisely the 
proletarian element in Judaism, particularly in Jerusalem, that 
approached the non-Jewish nations, especially the Romans, with 
a more and more fanatical hatred. The Roman was the worst 
oppressor and exploiter, the worst enemy, and the Hellene was 
his ally. Every point by which the Jews were distinguished from 
them was now emphasized more than ever before. All those who 
laid the greatest stress on propaganda among the Jews were 
necessarily impelled, from considerations based on the success of 
their agitation, to place greater emphasis on Jewish character- 
istics, to cling to all the Jewish laws, to which they were further- 
more inclined, owing to the influences of their environment. 

But in the same measure as the fanatical hatred of the Jews 
for the nationalities of their oppressors increased, the repulsion 
and contempt which the masses felt for the Jews also increased. 
Again this led many of the pagan Christians and their agitators 
not only to demand for themselves exemption from the Jewish 


388 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


laws, but also to speak more and more disparagingly of these 
laws. The contrast between the Jewish Christians and the pagan 
Christians became more and more, in the case of the latter, a 
hostility to Judaism itself. Yet, the belief in the Messiah, includ- 
ing also the crucified Messiah, was far too intimately interwoven 
with Judaism to enable the pagan Christians to deny the latter 
outright. They took over from Judaism all the messianic proph- 
ecies and other supports for the faith in the Messiah, and never- 
theless were simultaneously becoming more and more hostile 
towards Judaism. This added a new contradiction to the many 
contradictions already found in Christianity. 

We have already seen how great was the emphasis placed 
by the Gospels on Jesus’s descent from David, and how they 
make the most peculiar combinations in order to have the Galilean 
born in Jerusalem. Again and again they quote passages from 
the sacred scriptures of the Jews, in order to prove by them 
Jesus’s messianic mission. And they even represent Jesus himself 
as protesting against any accusation that he wished to abolish 
the Jewish law. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, 
or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For 
verily I say unto you: Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one 
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law until all be fulfilled” 
(Matthew v, 17; cf. Luke xvi, 16). 

Jesus commands his disciples as follows: 

“Go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the 
Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel” (Matthew x, 6). 

This is an outright prohibition against propaganda outside of 
Judaism. Jesus expressed himself similarly, though more gently, 
to a Phenician woman in Matthew (a Greek woman, born in 
Syro-Pheenicia, in Mark). She called out to him: 

“Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter 
is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a 
word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying: Send 
her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said: 
I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 389 


came she and worshiped him, saying: Lord, help me. But he 
answered and said: It is not meet to take the people’s bread and 
to cast it to dogs, and she said: Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of 
the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. Then Jesus 
answered and said unto her: O woman, great is thy faith: be it 
unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole 
from that very hour” (Matthew xv, 21 ff.; cf. Mark vii, 27). 

In this case Jesus consents to listen to reason. But at first he 
shows himself to be very ungracious toward the Greek woman, 
for the reason that she is not a Jewess, although she calls upon 
him as the son of David in terms suggesting a Jewish faith in the 
Messiah. 

Quite Jewish is the thought behind Jesus’s promise to his 
Apostles that they shall sit in his state of the future upon twelve 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This promise could 
have charms only for a Jew, and only for a Jew in Judea. It 
completely lost its point in the propaganda among the pagans. 

But while the Gospels took over such impressive traces of the 
Jewish faith in the Messiah, they often placed them in immediate 
juxtaposition with outbursts of that hostility to the Jews with 
which their authors and editors were filled. Jesus again and 
again delivers sermons against everything that is dear to the 
pious Jew, the fasts, the dietary laws, the observance of the 
Sabbath. He exalts the pagans over the Jews: 

“Therefore say I unto you: The kingdom of God shall be 
taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof” (Matthew xxi, 43). 

Jesus even goes so far as to curse the Jews outright: 

“Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his 
mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto 
thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty 
works, which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, 
they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But 
I say unto you: It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at 
the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, 
which art exalted into heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for 


390 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been 
done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I 
say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of 
Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee” (Matthew xi, 
20-24). 

These words are an evidence of distinct hatred of the Jews. 
We no longer hear one sect of Judaism reviling another sect of 
the same nation. Here the Jewish nation as such is branded as 
morally inferior, is represented as unusually malicious and 
stubborn. 

We also find this thought expressed in the prophecies laid into 
the mouth of Jesus concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, 
which of course were only fabricated after this event had come 
to pass. The Jewish War, which so astonishingly revealed the 
strength of the Jews and the danger they embodied for their 
enemies, this savage outburst of wild despair, exaggerated the 
hostility between Jews and pagans to the utmost degree, and had 
about the same effect therefore as the June Battle and the Paris 
Commune had in the Nineteenth Century on the class hatred 
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This also deepened 
the chasm between Jewish Christianity and pagan Christianity, 
but in addition it deprived the former more and more of its 
entire basis. The destruction of Jerusalem took the ground 
from under the feet of any independent class movement on the 
part of the Jewish proletariat. Such a movement must be based 
on the independence of the nation. After the destruction of 
Jerusalem, Jews existed only in foreign countries, among enemies, 
by whom they were all, rich and poor, equally hated and perse- 
cuted, and against whom they all had to hold firmly together. 
The charity of the wealthy toward their poor fellow-countrymen 
therefore reached a very high point precisely among the Jews; 
in many cases the feeling of national solidarity overpowered class 
hostilities. The Jewish phase of Christianity therefore actually 
lost its propaganda strength. Christianity from that time on 
became more and more exclusively a pagan Christianity, it was 
no longer a political party within Judaism, but a political party 
outside of Judaism, even hostile to Judaism. A Christian atti- 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 391 


tude and an anti-Semitic attitude gradually became identical 
conceptions. 

But with the downfall of the Jewish community, the national 
Jewish hope for the Messiah lost the soil from which it grew. 
It was possible for it to continue to live for a few decades, to 
make a few more spasmodic motions before its death, but as an 
effective factor in political and social development it had received 
its death-blow in the destruction of the Jewish capital. 

But this was not true of the hopes of the Messiah among the 
pagan Christians, who had been completely divorced from the 
Jewish nation and were untouched by its tribulations. The idea 
of the Messiah now retained its living force only in the form 
of the crucified Messiah, in other words, the non-Jewish Messiah, 
the Messiah translated into Greek, the Christ. 

In fact, the Christians went so far as to transform the grue- 
some event which signified the bankruptcy of the Jewish hope 
for the Messiah into a triumph of their Christ. Jerusalem now 
begins to appear as the enemy of Christ, the destruction of Jeru- 
salem is Christ’s revenge on the Jews, a fearful evidence of his 
victorious power. Luke tells of Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem: 

‘And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept 
over it, saying: If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in 
this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now 
they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, 
that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass 
thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee 
even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they 
shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou 
knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke xix, 41-44). 

And immediately thereafter Jesus again says that the days 
of the destruction of Jerusalem, bringing annihilation even to 
the pregnant and nursing mothers, will be ‘“‘days of revenge” 
(éxdikynoewc, Luke xxi, 22). 

The September murders of the French Revolution, which 
were not committed for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on 
infants, but in order to repel a cruel enemy, seem relatively 


392 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


gentle when compared with this judgment of the Good Shepherd. 

But the destruction of Jerusalem also had other consequences 
for Christian thought. We have already pointed out how Chris- 
tianity, which until then had been characterized by violence, now 
achieved its peaceful character. It was only among the Jews 
that we still find a vigorous democracy in the early beginnings 
of the Imperial Era. The other nations of the Empire had 
become cowardly and unfit for warfare, even their proletarians. 
The destruction of Jerusalem destroyed the last reservoir of 
popular energy inthe Empire. All rebellion now became hopeless. 
Christianity now became pagan Christianity only; this made it 
submissive, even servile. 

But the rulers of the Empire were the Romans. It was nec- 
essary for all the other elements of the Empire to ingratiate 
themselves with the Romans. While the first Christians had been 
Jewish patriots and enemies of all foreign rule and exploitation, 
the pagan Christians supplemented their hatred of the Jews with 
a worship of Romanism and of the imperial authority. We find 
this expressed even in the Gospels, in the well-known story of 
the provocateurs sent by the “scribes and Pharisees” to Jesus 
in order to provoke him to treasonable utterance: 

“And they watched him, and sent forth spies (¢yxa9étouc), 
which should feign themselves just men,* that they might take 
hold of his words, so that they might deliver him unto the power 
and authority of the governor. And they asked him, saying, 
Master, we know that thou seest and teachest rightly, neither 
acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God 
truly: Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or no? 
But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why 
tempt ye me? Show meapenny. Whose image and superscrip- 
tion hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. And he said 
unto them: Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be 
Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke xx, 
20-25). 

Jesus here expounds a remarkable theory of money and tax- 
axion: ‘The coin belongs to him whose image and superscription 


37.e., members of Jesus’s group. 


JEWISH AND PAGAN CHRISTIANS 393 


it bears; in paying taxes, we are therefore only returning his 
money to the emperor. 

The same spirit pervades the writings of the champions of 
propaganda among pagan Christians. Thus we read in the 
Epistle of Paul to the Romans (xiii, 1-7): 

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there 
is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance 
of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damna- 
tion. . . . For he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the 
minister of God, the revenger to execute wrath upon him that 
doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for 
wrath but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye 
tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually 
upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute 
to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom 
fear; honor to whom honor.” 

How far removed we are now from the Jesus who summoned 
his disciples to buy swords and who preached hatred of the rich 
and powerful; how far removed from the Christianity which in 
Saint John’s Revelation curses Rome and the kings allied with it 
most roundly: “Babylon, the great (Rome) the habitation of 
devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every un- 
clean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of 
the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have com- 
mitted fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are 
waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. . . . The 
kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived 
deliciously with her, shall bewail her and lament for her, when 
they shall see the smoke of her burning,” etc.! (xvili, 2, 3, 9). 

The fundamental note in the Acts of the Apostles is the 
emphasis on the hostility felt by the Jews for the teaching of 
the crucified Messiah, and also the emphasis on a certain alleged 
receptivity of the Romans for this teaching. What the Chris- 
tians either desired or imagined to be the case after the fall of 
Jerusalem is represented as having been the case in that city. 


394 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


The Christian propaganda, according to the Acts of the Apostles, 
is again and again suppressed by the Jews in Jerusalem; the 
Jews persecute and stone the Christians wherever they can, while 
the Roman authorities protect the Christians. We have seen 
that Paul was said to have been seriously menaced in Jerusalem 
while he was permitted to preach unmolested in Rome. Freedom 
in Rome, suppression by force in Jerusalem! 

But the most striking evidence of a hatred for the-Jews and 
flattery for the Romans appears in the story of Christ’s Passion, 
the tale of the sufferings and death of Christ. Here we can 
distinctly observe how the content of this story was transformed 
into its precise opposite under the influence of the new tendencies. 

As the story of the Passion is the most important part of the 
historical outline given by the Gospels, the only part in which 
we can pretend that we are dealing with history, and as it is 
very typical of the primitive Christian mode of writing history, 
this story deserves our special consideration. 


IV. THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 


THERE are indeed few things that may be pointed out in the 
Gospels with a certain degree of plausibility as actual facts in the 
life of Christ: his birth and his death; two facts which indeed, if 
they can be proved, would show that Jesus actually lived and was 
not merely a mythical figure, but which throw no light whatever 
upon the most important elements in a historical personality: 
namely, the activities in which this person engages between birth 
and death. The hodge-podge of moral maxims and miraculous 
deeds which is offered by the Gospels as a report on these 
activities is so full of impossible and obviously fabricated mate- 
rial, and has so little that can be borne out by other evidence, 
that it cannot be used as a source. 

Not much different is the case with the testimony as to the 
birth and death of Christ. Yet we have here a few indications 
that an actual nucleus of fact lies hidden under the mass of 
fabrications. We may infer the existence of some such basic 
facts if only from the circumstance that these stories contain 
communications that were extremely embarrassing for Christian- 
ity, which Christianity had surely not invented, but which were 
obviously too well known and accepted among its adherents to 
have enabled the authors of the Gospels to substitute their own 
inventions for them, which they often did without hesitation 
in other cases. 

One of these facts is the Galilean origin of Jesus, which was 
very inconvenient in view of his claims to be a Messiah of the 
line of David. For the Messiah had to come from the city of 
David. We have seen what peculiar subterfuges were required 
in order to connect the Galilean with this city. If Jesus had been 
merely a product of the imagination of some congregation with 
an exaggerated messianic vision, such a congregation would never 
have thought of making a Galilean of him. We may therefore 

395 


396 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ai least accept his Galilean origin, and with it his existence, as 
extremely probable. Also, we may accept his death on the cross. 
We have seen that the Gospels still contain passages which per- 
mit us to assume that Jesus had planned an insurrection by the 
use of force, and had been crucified for this attempt. This also 
is such an embarrassing situation that it can hardly be based on 
invention. It is too sharply in contrast with the spirit prevailing 
in Christianity at the time when it was beginning to reflect on its 
past and to record the history of its origin. Not—be it remem- 
bered—for historical purposes, but for polemical and propa- 
ganda purposes. 

The death of the Messiah himself by crucifixion was an idea 
so foreign to Jewish thought, which always represented the 
Messiah with the splendor of a victorious hero, that only a 
real event, the martyrdom of the champion of the good cause, 
producing an ineffaceable impression on his adherents, could 
have created the proper soil for the idea of the crucified Messiah. 

When the pagan Christians accepted the tradition of this 
crucifixion, they soon discovered that it had a drawback: tradi- 
tion declared that the Romans had crucified Jesus as a Jewish 
Messiah, a king of the Jews, in other words, a champion of Jewish 
independence, a traitor to Roman rule. After the fall of Jeru- 
salem this tradition became doubly embarrassing. Christianity 
was now in open opposition to the Jews, and wished to be on 
good terms with the Roman authorities. It was now important 
to distort the tradition in such a manner as to shift the blame 
for the crucifixion of Christ from the shoulders of the Romans 
to those of the Jews, and to cleanse Christ not only from every 
appearance of the use of force, but also from every expression 
of any pro-Jewish, anti-Roman ideas. 

But as the evangelists were just as ignorant as the great mass 
of the lower classes in those days, they produced the most 
remarkable mixtures of colors in their retouching of the original 
picture. 

Probably nowhere in the Gospels can we find more contra- 
dictions and absurdities than in the portion which for nearly 
two thousand years has always made the profoundest impression 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 397 


on the Christian world and stimulated its imagination most 
powerfully. Probably no other subject has been so frequently 
painted as the sufferings and the death of Christ. And yet this 
tale will bear no sober investigation, and is an aggregation of the 
most inartistic and crude devices. 

It was only the power of habit which caused even the finest 
spirits of Christendom to remain obtuse to the incredible interpo- 
lations made by the authors of the Gospels, so that the ele- 
mental pathos involved in the crucifixion of Jesus, as well as in 
any martyrdom for a great cause, had its effect in spite of this 
mass of detail and imparted a brighter halo even to the ridiculous 
and absurd elements of the story. 

The story of the Passion begins with Jesus’s entrance into 
Jerusalem. This is a king’s triumphal procession." The popula- 
tion comes out to greet him, some spread their clothes before him 
on the road, others chop down branches from the trees, in order 
to strew them on his path, and all shout to him with jubilation: 
“Hosanna (Help us!); blessed is he that cometh in the name of 
the Lord: blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that 
cometh in the name of the Lord” (Mark xi, 9). 

Kings were received thus among the Jews (cf. Kings ix, 13, 
speaking of Jehu). The common people are attached to Jesus; 
only the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, “the high priests and 
scribes”, are hostile to him. Jesus conducts himself as a dictator. 
He has sufficient strength to drive the sellers and bankers out of 
the Temple, without encountering the slightest resistance. He 
appears to have absolute control of this citadel of Judaism. 


1 As an amusing curiosity, let us here call attention to the “literary miracle 
accomplished by Matthew by having Jesus seated simultaneously on two animals 
as he rides into the city.’ (Bruno Bauer, Kritik der Evangelien, vol. ili, p. 
114.) The traditional translations gloss over this miracle. Thus, Luther 
translates: 

“And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they 
set him thereon” (Matthew xxi, 7). 

But in the original we read: “And they brought the ass (female) and the 
colt and laid their clothes upon both (ér dvrév) and set him upon both” 
(érdvw duTor). 

And in spite of all the liberties formerly taken by skilled literary artists, 
this stuff was rewritten century after century by one copyist after another, a 
proof of the thoughtlessness and simplicity of the compilers of the Gospels. 


398 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Of course this is a slight exaggeration on the part of the 
evangelist. If Jesus had ever possessed such great strength, it 
would not have failed to attract considerable notice. An author 
like Josephus, who relates the most insignificant details, surely 
would have had something to say on the subject. Besides, even 
the proletarian elements in Jerusalem, the Zealots, for instance, 
were never strong enough to govern the city without opposition. 
They encountered resistance again and again. If Jesus had been 
attempting to enter Jerusalem and purify the temple against the 
opposition of the Sadducees and Pharisees, it would have been 
necessary for him first to fight a victorious battle in the streets. 
Such street battles between the various Jewish factions were 
every-day events in Jerusalem at that time. 

It is worthy of note, however, in the tale of his entrance, that 
the population is represented as greeting Jesus as the bringer of 
“the kingdom of our father David’, in other words, as the 
restorer of the Jewish kingdom. This shows Jesus not only in 
the light of an opponent of the ruling class among the Jews, but 
also as opposing the ruling classes of the Romans. This hostility 
is surely not the product of a Christian imagination, but of the 
Jewish reality. 

There now follow in the report of the Gospels the events that 
we have already treated: the order that the disciples obtain 
arms, the treason of Judas, the armed conflict on the Mount of 
Olives. We have already seen that these are remnants of an 
ancient tradition that later were no longer felt to be appropriate 
and were retouched to make them more peaceful and submissive 
in tone. 

Jesus is taken prisoner, led to the high priest’s palace and there 
tried: 

“And the chief priests, and all the council sought for witnesses 
against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many 
bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not 
together. . . . And the high priest stood up in the midst, and 
asked Jesus, saying: Answerest thou nothing? What is it 
which these witness against thee? But he held his peace and 
answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 399 


unto him: Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And 
Jesus said: I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on 
the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 
Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we 
any further witnesses? ye have heard the blasphemy: what 
think ye? and they all condemned him to be guilty of death” 
(Mark xiv, 55, 56, 60-64). 

Truly a remarkable form of court procedure! The court 
assembles immediately after the arrest of the prisoner, the same 
night, and not in the courthouse, which was probably on the 
Mount of the Temple,’ but in the palace of the high priest! 
What would we think in Germany of the reliability of an account 
of a trial for high treason, with the court reported as sitting in 
the Royal Palace in Berlin! False witnesses now appear against 
Jesus, but in spite of the fact that no one cross-examines them, 
and that Jesus makes no reply to their accusations, they can 
adduce nothing to incriminate him. Jesus is the first to incrim- 
inate himself by declaring that he is the Messiah. Wherefore all 
this apparatus of false witnesses if this admission is sufficient 
to condemn Jesus? Their object is solely to demonstrate the 
wickedness of the Jews. The death sentence is immediately 
imposed. This is a violation of the prescribed forms, on which the 
Jews at that time laid very careful stress. Only a sentence of 
acquittal could be pronounced by the court without delay; a 
condemnation could only be pronounced on the day following 
the trial. 

But did the council at that time have the right to impose 
sentence of death at all? The Sanhedrin says: “Forty years 
before the destruction of the Temple Israel was deprived of the 
right to pronounce judgment of life and death.” 

We find this confirmed in the fact that the council does not 
execute the punishment of Jesus, but hands him over, after 
having tried him, to be tried again by Pilate, this time under 
the accusation of high treason against the Romans, the accusa- 
tion that Jesus had intended to make himself king of the Jews 


2 Schirer, Geschichte des jtidischen Volkes, vol. ii, p. 211. 


400 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


and thus free Judea from the Roman rule. An excellent indict- 
ment to be drawn by a court of Jewish patriots! 

It is quite possible, however, that the council had the right 
to pronounce sentences of death which required the approval 
of the Procurator for their execution. 

Now what course does the trial take before the Roman 
potentate? 

“And Pilate asked him: Art thou the King of the Jews? And 
he answering said unto him: Thou sayest it. And the chief 
priests accused him of many things: but he answered nothing. 
And Pilate asked him again, saying: Answerest thou nothing? 
Behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus 
yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marveled. Now at that 
feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they de- 
sired and there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with 
them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed 
murder in the insurrection. And the multitude crying aloud 
began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. But 
Pilate answered them, saying: Will ye that I release unto you 
the King of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had 
delivered him for envy. But the chief priests moved the people, 
that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate 
answered and said again unto them: What will ye then that I 
shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And 
they cried out again: Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto 
them: Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the 
more exceedingly: Crucify him. And so Pilate, willing to content 
the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, 
when he had scourged him, to be crucified” (Mark xv, 2-15). 

In Matthew, Pilate goes so far as to wash his hands in the 
presence of the multitude and to declare: “I am innocent of the 
blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the 
people, and said: his blood be on us, and on our children” 
(Matthew xxvii, 24, 25). 

Luke does not tell us that the council condemned Jesus to 
death; the council simply denounced Jesus to Pilate. 

“And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 401 


Pilate, and they began to accuse him, saying, We found this 
fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to 
Cesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King. And Pilate 
asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he 
answered him and said: Thou sayest it. Then said Pilate to 
the chief priests and to the people: I find no fault in this man. 
And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, 
teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this 
place” (Luke xxiii, 1-5). 

Luke is probably closest to the truth. Jesus is here accused 
of treason in the presence of Pilate and with courageous pride 
he does not deny his guilt. When asked by Pilate whether he 
is the king of Jews, in other words, their leader in the struggle 
for independence, Jesus declares: ‘“Thou hast said it.’ The 
Gospel of Saint John is aware how awkward it would be to retain 
this remnant of Jewish patriotism, and therefore has Jesus reply: 
“My kingdom is not of this world,’ meaning: if it had been of 
this world, my subordinates would have fought. The Gospel 
of Saint John is the youngest; it therefore took a long time for 
the Christian writers to make up their minds thus to distort the 
original facts. 

The case for Pilate was very clear. As a representative of 
the Roman power, he was merely doing his duty in having the 
rebel Jesus executed. 

But the great mass of the Jews had not the slightest cause 
to be indignant at a man who wished to have nothing to do 
with Roman rule and summoned them to refuse to pay taxes 
to the emperor. If Jesus really did so, he was acting in full 
accord with the spirit of Zealotism, then dominant in the Jeru- 
salem population. 

It therefore follows from the nature of the case, if we assume 
the accusation in the Gospel to be true, that the Jews sympa- 
thized with Jesus, while Pilate was obliged to condemn him. 

But what is the record in the Gospels? Pilate finds not the 
slightest guilt in Jesus, although the latter admits such guilt 
himself. The governor again and again declares the innocence 
of the accused, and asks what evil this man has done. 


402 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


This alone would be peculiar. But still more peculiar is the 
fact that although Pilate does not recognize Jesus’s guilt, he yet 
does not acquit him. 

Now it sometimes came to pass that the Procurator found a 
political case too complicated to judge it himself. But it is 
unheard of that one of the emperor’s officials should seek a 
solution of the difficulty by asking the masses of the people what 
was to be done with the accused. If he preferred not to pro- 
nounce condemnation in cases of high treason, he would have to 
send the accused to Rome, to the emperor. The Procurator 
Antonius Felix (52-60 a.p.), for example, acted thus. He en- 
ticed the head of the Jerusalem Zealots, the bandit chieftain 
Eleazar, who had harried the land for twenty years, to come to 
him, by promising him safe-conduct, then took him prisoner and 
sent him to Rome, besides crucifying many of his adherents. 

Pilate might thus have sent Jesus to Rome. But Matthew 
assigns a most ridiculous role to Pilate: a Roman judge, a rep- 
resentative of the Emperor Tiberius, lord of life and death, begs 
a popular gathering in Jerusalem to permit him to acquit a 
prisoner, and on their deciding negatively, replies: ‘Well, slay 
him, I am innocent of this blood!” But no quality could more 
violently contradict that of the historical Pilate than the clem- 
ency suggested in the Gospels. Agrippa I, in a letter to Philo, 
calls Pilate ‘an inexorable and ruthlessly severe character,” and 
accuses him of “corruption, bribery, violence, theft, man- 
handling, insults, continuous executions without sentence, endless 
and intolerable cruelties.”’ 

His severity and ruthlessness produced such terrible conditions 
that even the Central Government at Rome became disgusted 
and recalled him (36 A.D.). 

And we are asked to believe that this man was exceptionally 
just and kind in the case of the proletarian seditionist Jesus, 
besides showing a degree of consideration for the wishes of the 
people that was of fatal outcome for the accused! 

The evangelists were too ignorant to notice these difficulties. 
But they must have felt that they were assigning a peculiar role 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 403 


to the Roman governor. Therefore they looked for a cause that 
would make this role more plausible: they report that Pilate was 
accustomed to release a prisoner at Easter at the request of the 
Jews, and that when he offered to release Jesus they replied: 
“No, we should rather have the murderer Barabbas!”’ 

In the first place, it is peculiar that no such custom is men- 
tioned anywhere except in the Gospels; such a custom would be 
contrary to the Roman practice, which did not give governors the 
right of pardon. And it is contrary to any orderly legal practice 
to assign the right of pardon to an accidental mob rather than 
to a responsible body. Only theologians could accept such legal 
conditions at their face value. But even disregarding this, even 
if we accept the right of pardon so peculiarly assigned to the 
Jewish mob that happens to be circulating in front of the Procur- 
ator’s house, we must nevertheless ask what is the relation be- 
tween this practice and the present case? 

Jesus has not even been legally sentenced. Pontius Pilate is 
faced with the question: Is Jesus guilty of high treason or not? 
Shall I sentence him or not? And he answers with the question: 
Will you make use of your right of pardon in his favor or not? 
Pilate, instead of pronouncing judgment, appeals for pardon! If 
he considers Jesus innocent, has he not the right to acquit him? 

Now follows a new absurdity. The Jews are supposed to have 
the right to pardon; how do they exercise this right? Do they 
content themselves with asking that Barabbas be freed? No, 
they also demand that Jesus be crucified! The evangelists appar- 
ently infer that the right to pardon one implies the right to con- 
demn the other. 

This insane judicial practice is paralleled by a not less insane 
political practice. 

The evangelists depict for us a mob that hates Jesus to such 
an extent that it would rather pardon a murderer than him; the 
reader will please remember, a murderer—no more worthy object 
of clemency was available—and is not satisfied until Jesus is led 
off to crucifixion. 

Remember that this is the same mob that only yesterday hailed 
him as a king with cries of hosanna, spread garments before his 


404 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


steps and greeted him jubilantly, without the slightest contradict- 
ing voice. And it was just this devotion on the part of the mob 
that constituted—according to the Gospels—the cause for the 
desire on the part of the aristocrats to take Jesus’s life, also 
preventing them from attempting to arrest him by daylight, 
making them choose the night instead. And now this same mob 
appears to be just as unanimous in its wild, fanatical hatred 
against him, against the man who is accused of a crime that 
would make him worthy of the highest respect in the eyes of 
any Jewish patriot: the attempt to free the Jewish community 
from foreign rule. 

Has anything happened to justify this astonishing mental 
transformation? ‘The most powerful motives would be needed 
as an explanation of such a change. ‘The evangelists merely 
utter a few incoherent and ridiculous phrases, if anything at 
all. Luke and John assign no motives; Mark says: ‘The high 
priests incited the multitude against Jesus”; Matthew: ‘They 
persuaded the multitude.” These turns of phrase merely show 
that the Christian writers had lost even the last remnant of their 
political sense and political knowledge. 

Even the most brainless mob cannot be talked into fanatical 
hatred without some motive. This motive may be foolish or base, 
but there must be a motive. The Jewish mob in the Gospels 
exceeds the most infamous and idiotic stage villain in its stupid 
villainy. For without the slightest reason, without the slightest 
cause, it clamors for the blood of him whom it venerated but 
yesterday. 

The matter becomes still more stupid when we consider the 
political conditions of the time. Distinguishing itself from almost 
all the other portions of the Roman Empire, the Jewish com- 
munity had a particularly active political life, presenting the 
highest extremes of all social and political oppositions. The 
political parties were well organized, were by no means mobs 
beyond control. The lower classes of Jerusalem had been com- 
pletely imbued with Zealotism, and were in constant sharp clash 
with the Sadducees and Pharisees, and filled with the most savage 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 405 


hatred against the Romans. Their best allies were the rebellious 
Galileans. 

Even if the Sadducees and Pharisees succeeded in “inciting”’ 
certain of the people against Jesus, they could not possibly 
have brought about a unanimous popular demonstration, but at 
most a bloody street-battle. There is nothing more ridiculous 
than the notion that the Zealots would dash with savage cries, 
not against the Romans and aristocrats, but against the accused 
rebel whose execution they force from the jelly-fish Roman 
governor, in spite of the governor’s strange infatuation for the 
traitor. 

No one ever invented anything more outrageously childish. 
But with this effort to represent the bloody tyrant Pilate as an 
innocent lamb, and to make the native depravity of the Jews 
responsible for the crucifixion of the harmless and peaceful 
Messiah, the genius of the evangelists is completely exhausted. 
The stream of their invention runs dry for a bit and the original 
story again peeps through at least for a moment: After being 
condemned, Jesus is derided and maltreated—but not by the 
Jews—by the soldiers of the same Pilate who has just declared 
him innocent. Pilate now has his soldiers not only crucify Jesus, 
but first has him scourged and derided as King of the Jews; a 
crown of thorns is put upon his head, a purple mantle folded about 
him, the soldiers bend the knee before him, and then they again 
beat him upon the head and spit on him. Finally they place 
upon his cross the inscription, “Jesus, King of the Jews”. 

This again brings out the original nature of the dénouement. 
Again the Romans appear as Jesus’s bitter enemies, and the 
cause of their derision as well as of their hatred is his high 
treason, his claim to be King of the Jews, his effort to shake off 
the Roman yoke. 

Unfortunately, the simple truth does not continue to hold the 
floor for long. 

Jesus dies, and it is now necessary to furnish proof, in the 
form of a number of violent theatrical effects, that a god has 
passed away: 


406 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


“Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up 
the ghost. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain 
from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the 
rocks rent; and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the 
saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his 
resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto 
many” (Matthew xxvii, 50-53). 

The evangelists do not report what the resurrected “saints” 
accomplish in and after their joint outing to Jerusalem, whether 
they remain alive or duly lay themselves down again in their 
graves. In any case, one would expect that such an extraor- 
dinary event would have made a profound impression on all 
eye-witnesses and convinced everyone of the divinity of Jesus, 
but the Jews still remain obstinate; again it is only the Romans 
who recognize the divinity. 

“Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, 
watching Jesus, saw the earthquake and those things that were 
done, they feared greatly, saying, ‘Truly, this was the Son of 
God’”” (Matthew xxvii, 54). 

But the high priests and Pharisees on the other hand still 
declare Jesus to be an impostor (xxvii, 63), and when he is 
resurrected from the dead the only effect is that the Roman eye- 
witnesses become richer by the bribe we have already men- 
tioned, in payment for their declaring the miracle to be an 
imposture. 

Thus, at the end of the story of the Passion, Jewish bribery 
transforms the honest Roman soldiers into tools of Jewish 
treachery and baseness, which had shown devilish hatred in 
fighting the sublimest divine clemency. 

In this entire tale the tendency of servility toward the Romans 
and hatred for the Jews is laid on so thick and expressed in 
such an accumulation of monstrosities that one would think it 
could not have had the slightest influence on intelligent persons, 
and yet we know that this device worked very well. This tale, 
enhanced by the halo of divinity, ennobled by the martyrdom 
of the proud proclaimer of a high mission, was for many cen- 


THE STORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION 407 


turies one of the best means of arousing hatred and contempt 
for the Jews, even in the most benevolent minds of Christendom; 
for Judaism was nothing to them, and they kept aloof from it; 
they branded the Jews as the scum of humanity, as a race en- 
dowed by nature with the most wicked malice and obstinacy, 
that must be kept away from all human society, held down with 
an iron hand. 

But it would have been impossible ever to secure a general 
acceptance of this attitude toward the Jews, if it had not arisen 
at a time of a universal hatred and persecution of the Jews. 

Arising at a time when the Jews were outlawed, it has im- 
mensely aggravated this condition, prolonged its duration, 
widened its sphere. 

What we know as the story of the Passion of our Lord Jesus 
Christ is in reality only an incident in the history of the suffer- 
ings of the Jewish people. 


V. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ORGANIZATION 
OF THE CONGREGATION 


a. Proletarians and Slaves 


WE have seen that several ingredients of Christianity, monothe- 
ism, messianism, belief in the resurrection, the Essenian com- 
munism, arose among the Jews, and that a part of the lower 
classes of this people found the most satisfactory expression of 
its desires and aspirations in a combination of these elements. 
We have also seen that the whole social organism of the Roman 
Empire was permeated with conditions rendering it—particularly 
its proletarian sections—more and more susceptible to these 
new tendencies of Jewish origin, but that these tendencies, when 
subjected to the influence of a non-Jewish environment, not only 
were severed from Judaism, but even assumed a hostile attitude 
toward the latter. These tendencies now became fused with 
the movements of the dying Greco-Roman world, which trans- 
formed the vigorous national spirit prevailing among the Jews 
down to the destruction of Jerusalem into its precise opposite, 
diluting the Jewish movement in a helpless resignation, an abject 
servility, a longing for death. 

Simultaneously with the change in the realm of thought, the 
organization of the congregation also was profoundly altered. 

At first it had been inspired with a vigorous but hazy com- 
munism, a condemnation of all private property, a desire for a 
new and better social order in which all class differences should 
be eliminated by a division of property. 

Probably the Christian congregation was at first chiefly a 
fighting organization, if we are correct in our assumption that 
the various otherwise inexplicable references to violence in the 
Gospels are the remnants of the original tradition. This trait 
would also be in full accord with the historical position of the 


Jewish nation at that time. 
408 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 409 


It would be inconceivable to assume that a proletarian sect 
—above all—should remain untouched by the general revolu- 
tionary current. 

At any rate, the first Christian organizations among the Jews 
were saturated with the desire for revolution, for the coming 
of the Messiah, for social upheaval. Attention to the present 
moment, the practical detail work in other words, was probably 
neglected. 

But this condition changed after the destruction of Jeru- 
salem. The elements that had given the messianic congregation 
its rebellious character had been defeated. And the congrega- 
tion of the Messiah became more and more an anti-Jewish 
congregation, within the non-Jewish proletariat, which had neither 
the ability nor the desire for struggle. But as the congregation 
became older, it became more and more clear that it could no 
longer count on the fulfillment of the prophecy still contained in 
the Gospels, to the effect that the contemporaries of Jesus would 
live to see the great change. Faith in the coming of the “King- 
dom of God” on earth gradually disappeared. The Kingdom of 
God, which was to descend from Heaven, was now more and more 
transferred to Heaven; the resurrection of the flesh was trans- 
formed into the immortality of the soul, which was alone destined 
to experience all the joys of Heaven or the pangs of Hell. 

As the messianic expectations of the future assumed more and 
more this unworldly form, becoming politically conservative or 
indifferent, the practical interest in the present day necessarily 
became more and more prominent. 

But with the decrease in revolutionary enthusiasm, practical 
communism itself underwent certain changes. 

Originally it had resulted from an energetic but vague desire 
for the abolition of all private property, a desire to remedy the 
poverty of the comrades by pooling all possessions. 

But we have already pointed out that in contrast to the Es- 
senes, the Christian congregations were originally merely urban, 
even chiefly metropolitan congregations, and that this constituted 
an obstacle to the full and permanent development of their com- 
munism. 


410 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Among the Essenes, as well as among the Christians, com- 
munism had originally been a communism of consumption, of 
ownership in commodities. But consumption and production are 
today still closely related in country districts, and this was then 
far more the case. Production meant production for private con- 
sumption, not for sale; agriculture, cattle-breeding, the house- 
hold, all were closely related. Large-scale production in 
agriculture was quite feasible at the time and already superior to 
petty production, inasmuch as it permitted a more perfect division 
of labor and a fuller utilization of the various tools and structures. 
Of course, this was more than neutralized by the disadvantages 
of slave labor. But while operation by slaves was then by far 
the most common form of large-scale agriculture, it was not the 
only possible form. We already find large establishments oper- 
ated by numerous peasant families, at the very beginning of 
agricultural evolution. The Essenes probably established family 
cooperative agricultural enterprises on a large scale wherever the 
Essenes constituted great semi-monastic settlements in the wil- 
derness, resembling the settlement by the Dead Sea of which 
Pliny reports (Natural History, Book v), where they “lived in the 
society of the palms’’. 

But the form of production is in the last analysis always the 
decisive factor in every social structure. Only such societies as 
are based on the mode of production may have strength and en- 
durance. 

While social or codperative agriculture was possible at the time 
when Christianity originated, none of the necessary prerequisites 
for cooperative urban industry was, however, present. Workers 
in urban industries were either slaves or free domestic workers. 
Large establishments with free workers, resembling the large peas- 
ant family, were hardly known. Slaves, domestic workers, bur- 
den-bearers, also peddlers, small shopkeepers, the Lumpenprole- 
tariat, these were the lower classes of the urban population of 
those times among whom communistic tendencies might arise. 
But these classes present no element that might have expanded 
the common possession of commodities into a common faculty of 

-production. The common element remained a community of 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 411 


consumption only. And this community in turn was essentially 
nothing more than the taking of common meals. Clothing and 
habitations in the cradle of Christianity, also in southern and 
central Italy, were not of great importance. Even such a thor- 
oughgoing communism as that of the Essenes did not go far in 
establishing a community of clothing. In the matter of clothing, 
private property seems indeed inevitable. A community in dwell- 
ings was all the harder to attain in a large city since the work- 
shops of the various comrades were scattered in all directions, 
and since real estate speculation in the early Christian era made 
the prices of houses in large cities very high. The absence of 
transportation facilities herded the population of large cities in a 
small space and made the owners of this space the absolute mas- 
ters of its inhabitants, who were frightfully mulcted. Houses 
were built as high in the air as the art of masonry then permitted; 
in Rome they were seven stories or more in height; rents reached 
fabulous figures. Real estate profiteering was therefore a favorite 
form of investment for the capitalist of the time. In the trium- 
virate which bought out the Roman Republic, particularly Crassus 
had gained his wealth by such speculations. 

The proletarians of the large city could not compete in this 
field; this alone made it impossible for them to resort to com- 
munity dwellings. Furthermore, in view of the suspicious char- 
acter of the emperors, the Christian congregation could not exist 
except as a secret society. Community dwellings would have 
rendered its discovery an easy matter. 

Therefore the Christian communism could not have any per- 
manent general form for most of the members except as expressed 
in the common meals. 

The gospels also describe the ‘““Kingdom of God”, the state of 
the future, almost exclusively as a common repast; no other joy 
is expected; this bliss evidently was foremost in the minds of 
the early Christians. 

Important though this form of practical communism may have 
been for the free proletarians, it meant very little to the slaves, 
who usually were a part of the family of their master and were 
fed at his table, frugally enough, to be sure. Only a few slaves 


412 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


lived outside of their master’s home, for instance, those who kept 
a shop in town for the sale of the products of their master’s 
country estate. 

For the slaves the hope in the coming Messiah, the prospect of 
a kingdom of general bliss, necessarily was most attractive, much 
more so than practical communism, which could be realized only 
in forms that had little meaning for them so long as they were 
slaves. 

We do not know the attitude of the first Christians with regard 
to slavery. The Essenes condemned it, as we have seen. Philo 
reports: 

“Among them none is a slave, but all are free, mutually work- 
ing for each other. They consider slave-holding to be not only 
unjust and a violation of piety, but also godless, a transgression 
of the natural law, which has created all equal . . . as brothers.” 

Probably the proletarians of the Jerusalem congregation of the 
Messiah were of the same mind. 

But the prospects of social revolution disappeared with the 
destruction of Jerusalem. The spokesmen of the Christian con- 
gregation, who were so solicitously concerned not to give rise to 
any suspicion of hostility to the dominant powers, necessarily 
attempted also to pacify the rebellious slaves whom they might 
count in their ranks. 

Thus, for example, the author of the Epistle of Paul to the 
Colossians—in the extant form an “editing” or fabrication dating 
from the Second Century—adjures the slaves as follows: 

“Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the 
flesh; not with eye service as men pleasers; but in singleness of 
heart, fearing God” (iii, 22). 

The author of the First Epistle of Saint Peter—probably com- 
posed in the time of Trajan—uses even plainer terms: 

“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only 
to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.* For this is 
thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, 
suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buf- 


1 Sxodwors, which implies injustice, treachery, malice. Luther very mildly 
translates: die wunderlichen. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 413 


feted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye 
do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable 
with God” (I Peter ii, 18-20). 

The incipient Christian opportunism of the Second Century 
even found it proper for Christian masters to keep slaves who 
were their brethren in the congregation, as is proved by Paul’s 
First Epistle to Timothy: 

“Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own 
masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doc- 
trine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, 
let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather 
do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers 
of the benefit” (ayamntoi).? (vi, 1, 2.) 

Nothing could be more erroneous than the assumption that 
Christianity abolished slavery; on the contrary, it provided 
slavery with a new support. In antiquity, the slave was kept in 
his place by fear. It was reserved for Christianity to exalt the 
blind obedience of the slave to a moral duty, cheerfully per- 
formed. 

Christianity, at least after it ceased to be revolutionary, no 
longer offered the slave a hope for freedom, and its practical 
communism also rarely involved advantages for the slave. The 
sole element that might still attract the latter was “‘equality be- 
fore God,” in other words, within the congregation, where each 
comrade had equal rights, where the slave might sit beside his 
master at the common repast, if the latter also was a member of 
the congregation. 

Callistus, the Christian slave of a Christian freedman, even 
became bishop of Rome (217-222 A.D.). 

But even this form of equality was no longer of much signifi- 
cance. The reader should recall how close the status of the free 
proletariat was to that of the slaves, from whose number it drew 
many of its members, and that on the other hand the slaves of 
the imperial family attained high positions in the state and were 
often flattered even by aristocrats. 

If Christianity, in spite of all its communism and all its prole- 


2 The common meals. 


414 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


tarian sentiment, was unable to abolish slavery even in its own 
ranks, slavery must have had powerful roots in “pagan” an- 
tiquity, although the latter on the whole was opposed to it, and 
although ethics as a rule is closely bound up with the mode of 
production. The all-embracing love of one’s neighbor, the fra- 
ternity, the equality of all before God, as proclaimed in the con- 
gregation of the Messiah, were no more incompatible with slavery 
than were the Rights of Man, as proclaimed in the Declaration 
of Independence of the United States of America. Christianity 
from the start was chiefly a religion of the free proletariat, but 
in spite of all the rapprochement between the latter and the slaves 
in antiquity, there remained a difference of interests between the 
two classes. 

The free proletarians constituted a majority in the Christian 
congregation from the outset, preventing the interests of the 
slaves from finding a full expression in the congregation. This 
in turn necessarily made the congregation less attractive to slaves 
than to free proletarians, thus strengthening the latters’ majority. 

Economic evolution was working in the same direction. Pre- 
cisely at the time when the revolutionary tendencies in the Chris- 
tian congregation received their death-blow, namely, at the time of 
the fall of Jerusalem, a new era begins for the Roman Empire, 
an era of universal peace, domestic peace, but also in great meas- 
ure international peace, since the Roman Empire had lost its 
power of expansion. But war, civil war as well as imperialistic 
war, had been the means of obtaining cheap slaves; this condition 
now ceased. The slave became rare and costly; slave operation 
no longer paid; in agriculture it was replaced by the coloni, in 
urban industry by the labor of free workers. More and more the 
slave ceased to be a producer of necessary products and became 
a producer of luxuries. Personal services to the great and power- 
ful now became the chief function of slavery. The spirit of the 
slave now became more and more synonymous with the spirit of 
the lackey. The days of Spartacus were gone. 

The opposition between the slaves and the free proletarians 
necessarily was sharpened by a decrease in the number of slaves, 
proceeding simultaneously with an increase in the number of free 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION § 415 


proletarians in the large cities. Both these tendencies caused 
the slave element in the Christian congregation to be relegated 
still further to the background. It is not surprising that Chris- 
tianity finally lost all interest in the slaves. ; 

This evolution is easy to understand if we regard Christianity 
as the precipitation of certain class interests; but it cannot be un- 
derstood if we consider Christianity merely as an ideological 
structure. For the logical development of its fundamental no- 
tions necessarily would have led to the abolition of slavery; but 
logic has never operated in universal history when class interests 
have decreed otherwise. 


b. The Decline of Communism 


The recognition of slavery, as well as the increasing tendency 
to limit the community of goods to the common meals, were not 
the only obstacles encountered by the Christian congregation in 
its effort to carry out its communistic ambitions. 

These aspirations demanded that every member of the congre- 
gation sell all his possessions and place the proceeds at the dis- 
posal of the congregation for distribution to its members. 

It is plain at the outset that such a practice could not be car- 
ried out on a large scale. Its necessary presupposition was that 
at least one-half of society should remain unbelievers, otherwise 
there would have been no one to buy the possessions of the be- 
lievers. Nor could anyone have been found to sell to the be- 
lievers the foodstuffs they needed, in return for the proceeds of 
these sales. 

If the believers intended to live not on production but by divi- 
sion, a sufficient number of unbelievers was necessary, who would 
produce for the believers. But even in the latter case, the sys- 
tem was doomed as soon as all the believers had sold their prop- 
erty, distributed and consumed it. Of course the Messiah would 
descend from the clouds before then and remedy all the evils 
“of the flesh’’. 

But this test never had time to be applied. 

The number of the members who had anything worth selling 
and dividing was very small in the early stages of the congre- 


416 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


gation. They could not live on that. They could obtain a per- 
manent income only by having each member deliver his daily 
earnings to the congregation. If the members were not mere 
beggars or burden-bearers, they needed some property if they 
would earn anything, property in the means of production for 
weavers, potters, or smiths, or in stock of goods, in the case of 
shopkeepers or peddlers. 

Under the given circumstances, the congregation could not 
arrange special workshops to produce for its own needs, as did 
the Essenes; it could not isolate itself from the realm of com- 
modity production and individual production; therefore, in spite 
of all its communistic aspirations, it had to accept private prop- 
erty in the means of production and stocks of commodities. 

But having recognized production by the individual, the recog- 
nition of the individual household, connected with such produc- 
tion, had to follow; also that of the single family, and monogamy, 
in spite of all their common meals. 

Again the practical outcome of the communistic tendencies is 
found to be the common meals. But it was not their only result. 
The proletarians had succeeded in uniting in order to reduce 
their misery by their united efforts. When they encountered 
obstacles in the execution of a perfect communism, they found 
themselves all the more obliged to expand their charity work, 
which would give assistance to the individual in cases of extraor- 
dinary distress. 

The Christian congregations were closely connected with each 
other. A member arriving from another town was given work 
by the congregation if he wished to stay; if he wished to travel 
further, he was given an expense mite. 

If a member became ill, the congregation took charge of him. 
When he died, it buried him at its own expense and looked after his 
widow and children; if he was imprisoned, which happened often 
enough, it was again the congregation that brought him consola- 
tion and aid. 

The Christian proletarian organization thus created a sphere 
of duties about equivalent to the system of insurances in a modern 
nation. In the Gospels, it is the observance of this mutual in- 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 417 


surance system that entitles one to the life eternal. When the 
Messiah comes, he will divide men into those that are to share in 
the splendor of the state of the future and the life eternal and 
those destined to eternal damnation. To the former, the sheep, 
the King will say: 

“Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungered, 
and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was 
a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was 
sick and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” 
The righteous will then reply that they have done no such thing 
for the King. “And the King will answer and say unto them: 
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Mat- 
thew xxv, 34, 40). 

Their common meals and their mutual charity were in any 
case the securest bond within the Christian congregation, per- 
manently holding the masses together. 

But precisely this practice of charity was developing a force 
destined to weaken and burst asunder the original communistic 
aspirations. 

As the expectation of the coming of the Messiah in all his glory 
dwindled, as the congregation became more and more convinced 
that it was necessary to acquire property in order to carry out 
its program of assistance, the proletarian class character of the 
Christian propaganda was violated. More and more effort was 
directed to the recruiting of wealthy members whose money could 
be put to use. 

The more money the congregation needed, the more diligently 
did its agitators work in order to prove to wealthy patrons the 
vanity of all the treasures of this world, their worthlessness com- 
pared to the bliss of eternal life, which was attainable by the rich 
only if they parted with their possessions. And their preaching 
in that time of general dispiritedness, particularly among the 
wealthy classes, was not without effect. How many wealthy per- 
sons there were who, after a dissipated youth, were filled with 
disgust with all enjoyments and all means of enjoyment. Having 


418 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


exhausted all the sensations to be bought with money, one sensa- 
tion still remained: that of poverty. 

Down into the Middle Ages we still find a frequent recurrence 
of the case of wealthy persons who give all their possessions to 
the poor and lead the life of beggars themselves, in most cases 
after having fully enjoyed all the pleasures of the world, to the 
point of complete nausea. 

But such persons were not so numerous as to make these wind- 
falls as frequent as the congregation required. With the increas- 
ing distress in the empire, with the multiplication of the Lumpen- 
proletariat in the congregation, who either could not or would not 
earn their bread by toil, it became more imperative to recruit 
rich persons in order to pay the expenses of the congregation. 

It was easier to get a rich man to leave his money for the char- 
ity purposes of the congregation at his death than to make him 
donate it during his lifetime. Childless families were very com- 
mon; family ties were very weak; the desire to make bequests to 
relatives often very slight. On the other hand, the interest in 
one’s own personality had been developed to a high point, in- 
volving a desire for a continued life after death, for a happy life, 
of course. 

The Christian doctrine was well adapted to the satisfaction of 
this desire, and a convenient way of attaining eternal bliss without 
serious privations in this life was open to the rich if they did not 
give away their property until death, when it was no longer of 
use to them. The bequest of their property, now quite useless, 
might purchase them eternal salvation. 

The Christian agitators therefore captured the young and pas- 
sionate aristocrats through their disgust with the life they had 
led; they captured exhausted old rich men through their fear of 

death and the pangs of Hell awaiting them. A stealthy manipula- 
~ tion of inheritances has never since ceased to be a favorite method 
of Christian agitators, for gorging the strong stomach of the 
Church with more and more food. 

But in the first few centuries of the congregation’s life, the 

supply of rich bequests was probably not large, particularly since 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 419 


the congregation, being a secret organization, was not a legal 
personage and could therefore not inherit directly. 

Efforts were therefore made to recruit rich persons while they 
were still alive for the support of the congregation, even if such 
persons were not ready to carry out strictly the Lord’s command- 
ment to distribute among the poor all they possessed. We have 
seen that generosity was a common trait among the wealthy of 
that day before the accumulation of capital played an important 
part in the mode of production. This generosity redounded to 
the advantage of the congregation, constituting a permanent 
source of its income, whenever it was possible to awaken the in- 
terest and the sympathy of the wealthy for the congregation. 
The more the congregation ceased to be a fighting organization, 
the more its charity phase was emphasized, the stronger became 
the tendencies within the congregation to soften the original pro- 
letarian hatred against the rich and to enable the latter to feel 
at home in the congregation, even though they remained rich and 
clung to their possessions. 

The congregation’s view of life—rejection of the ancient gods, 
monotheism, the belief in resurrection, the hope for the Messiah 
—these things, as we have seen, were in accord with the general 
tendencies of the times, making the Christian doctrine sympathetic 
even to the upper classes. 

On the other hand, the rich, faced with the increasing distress 
of the masses, were seeking for methods of decreasing this dis- 
tress, as their charity foundations go to show. For this distress 
menaced all society. This fact also made the Christian organiza- 
tions more sympathetic in their eyes. 

Finally, the desire for popularity also played a part in the sup- 
port given the Christian congregations, at least in places where 
these congregations acquired an influence over a considerable por- 
tion of the population. 

Therefore the Christian congregation might very well become 
attractive even to such rich persons as had not become unworldly 
and despairing, as were not driven to promise a bequest of their 
property by fear of death or the pangs of eternal damnation. 

But to make the rich feel at home in the congregation, its char- 


420 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


acter had to be changed fundamentally; class hatred of the rich 
had to be abandoned. 

The proletarian fighting spirits in the congregation were hurt 
by this effort to attract the rich and make concessions to them, 
as we learn from the General Epistle of James to the twelve tribes 
of the Diaspora, dating from the middle of the Second Century 
and mentioned before in this book. James admonishes the mem- 
bers: “For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold 
ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in 
vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the 
gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; 
and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my foot- 
stool: are ye not then partial in yourselves and are become judges 
of evil thoughts? . . . But ye have despised the poor. . . . But 
if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin” (ii, 2-9). 

And then he attacks those who would require only a theoretical 
acceptance of doctrine by the rich, and not that they give their 
money: 

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath 
faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or 
sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say 
unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwith- 
standing ye give them not those things which are needful to the 
body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is 
dead, being alone” (ii, 14-17). 

The foundation of the organization was of course not altered 
by this consideration for the rich; that foundation remained 
theoretically and practically unchanged. But the duty to give 
all one owned was replaced by a voluntary self-imposed tax, often 
amounting to but a small gift. 

Somewhat younger than the Epistle of James is the Afolo- 
geticus of Tertullian (probably about 150-160 A.p.). This docu- 
ment also describes the organization of the congregation: 

“Even if there does exist a sort of common fund, it is not made 
up of fees, as though we contracted for our worship. Each of us 
puts in a small amount one day a month, or whenever he pleases; 
and only if he pleases and if he is able, for there is no compulsion 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 421 


in the matter, everyone contributing of his own free will. These 
monies are, as it were, the deposits of piety. They are expended 
upon no banquets or drinking-bouts or useless eating-houses, but 
on feeding and burying poor people, on behalf of boys and girls 
who have neither parents nor money, in support of old folk un- 
able now to go about, as well as for people who are shipwrecked, 
or who may be in the mines or exiled in islands or in prison—so 
long as their distress is for the sake of God’s fellowship, and they 
themselves entitled to maintenance by their confession.” 

Tertullian goes on: ‘‘We who feel ourselves united heart and 
soul, have no difficulties about community of goods; with us all 
is common, except our wives; the community ceases there, where 
alone others practice it.’ ° 

Communism was therefore retained theoretically, and in prac- 
tice only the severer of its applications seemed to be softened. But 
imperceptibly the entire character of the congregation, originally 
adapted solely to proletarian conditions, was changing because 
of the increased consideration for the rich. Those elements who 
favored the recruiting of rich members had to combat not only 
the class hatred of the congregation, but also to alter its internal 
operations in many ways. 

Although communism had been much weakened, the common 
meals still remained the firm bond uniting all the members. The 
charitable arrangements were applicable only in isolated cases of 
distress, to which all members were, however, exposed. But the 
common meal satisfied the daily needs of every member. This 
meal was attended by the entire congregation; it was the center 
around which the entire life of the congregation revolved. 

But the common meal had no significance as a meal, in the case 
of the wealthy members. They had better food and drink at 
their own homes. The simple, often coarse meal surely offended 
their fastidious palates. ‘They came to these meals for the pur- 
pose of participating in the congregational life, obtaining influ- 
ence in it, not to fill their stomachs. That which meant the sat- 

3 Quoted in Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Cen- 


turies, London and New York, 1904-6, vol. i, pp. 189-190. Cf. Pfleiderer, 
Primitive Christianity, vol. iv, p. 479. 


422 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


isfaction of a physical need for the others, meant for them only 
the satisfaction of a spiritual need; sharing the bread and wine 
was a purely symbolic performance. As the number of the 
wealthy increased in the congregation, there was also an increase 
in the number of those participants in the common meals who 
were concerned only in the gathering and its symbols, not in 
eating and drinking. Therefore, in the Second Century, the 
actual common meals for the poorer members were detached 
from the purely symbolic meals intended for the entire congrega- 
tion, and in the Fourth Century, after the Church had become the 
dominant power in the State, meals of the former kind were elimi- 
nated from the meeting houses of the congregation, the churches. 
They fell more and more into disuse, being abolished in the 
course of the following centuries. ‘The most prominent feature 
of practical communism thus disappeared entirély from the 
Christian congregation, and its place was taken exclusively by the 
charity work, the solicitude for the poor and weak, which has 
been retained to this day, on a considerably less extensive scale, 
however. 

There remained nothing in the congregation that might offend 
the rich; it had ceased to be a proletarian institution. The rich, 
who originally had been entirely excluded from the “Kingdom of 
God”, unless they gave their possessions to the poor, might now 
play the same role in this Kingdom as in the “World of the 
Devil’, and they have made abundant use of this privilege. 

Not only were the old class contrasts again revived in the 
Christian congregation, but a new dominant class arose in the 
latter, a new bureaucracy with a new head, the bishop, whose ac- 
quaintance we shall make very soon. 

It was the Christian congregation, not Christian communism, 
to which the Roman emperors finally bent the knee. The vic- 
tory of Christianity was not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but 
a dictatorship of the masters it had raised in its own congregation. 

The champions and martyrs of the early congregations, who 
had surrendered their possessions, their labors, their lives, for the 
liberation of the poor and miserable, had merely laid the founda- 
tions for a new mode of tyranny and exploitation. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 423 
) 


c. Apostles, Prophets and Teachers 


Originally the congregation had no officers and no distinctions 
between its members. All members, male or female, might set 
up as teachers and agitators, if they felt that they had the stuff 
in them. Each spoke out frankly, “according to his lights”, or 
as it was phrased in those days, as the Holy Ghost moved him. 
Most of them also, of course, continued their own trades, but 
quite a number, who had gained particular prestige, sold their 
possessions and devoted themselves entirely to agitation as apos- 
tles or prophets. A new class distinction was the result. 

Two classes now arose within the Christian congregation: the 
ordinary members, whose practical communism was applied only 
to the common meals and the general welfare arrangements of 
the congregation: assigning jobs, giving aid to widows and 
orphans, as well as to prisoners; sickness insurance, death benefits. 

But those who carried out communism completely were con- 
sidered to be “holy” or “perfect” ones; these renounced prop- 
erty and monogamy, giving all their possessions to the con- 
gregation. } 

This was a fine gesture and gave these radical elements, as 
their very names indicate, great prestige in the congregation; 
and they were animated by a feeling of superiority over the 
other comrades and conducted themselves as a dominant élite. 

Thus the radical form of communism was the one that pro- 
duced a new aristocracy. 

Like every other aristocracy, the latter did not content itself 
with claiming the right to command the rest of the community, 
but also attempted to exploit the community. 

After all, how should the “holy” live, having given away all 
the means of production and stores of goods that they owned? 
They could only resort to occasional labor, such as carrying par- 
cels or running errands and the like, or to mendicancy. 

The most natural thing to do was to gain a livelihood by beg- 
ging from their comrades and from the congregations themselves, 
who could not permit a worthy man or a worthy woman to starve, 
particularly if this meritorious member possessed the gift of 


424 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


propaganda; this gift then required no knowledge that was dif- 
ficult to acquire, but merely temperament, a nimble wit and readi- 
ness in repartee. 

We already find Paul upbraiding the Corinthians and remind- 
ing them that the congregation is obliged to relieve him and all 
other apostles of manual labor, and also to support them: 

“Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus 
Christ our Lord? . . . Have we not power to lead about a sister, 
a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, 
and Cephas? Or I only and Barnabas, have we not power to 
forbear working? . . . Who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of 
the milk of the flock? . . . For it is written in the Law of Moses, 
Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the 
corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether 
for our sakes?” 

God’s threshing ox means us: this is the significance of Paul’s 
words. Of course this passage does not refer to oxen who are 
threshing empty straw. The apostle continues: 

“Tf we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if 
we shall reap your carnal things? If others be partakers of this 
power over you, are not we rather?” (I Corinthians ix, 7-12). 

The last sentence, we may remark in passing, also indicates 
the communistic character of the first Christian congregations. 

After this plea for the good things of life for the apostles, Paul 
states that he is not speaking for himself, but for others; he asks 
nothing from the Corinthians. But he permits other congrega- 
tions to support him: “I robbed other churches, taking wages of 
them (dWaviev), to do you service . . . for that which was lack- 
ing to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied” 
(II Corinthians xi, 8). 

But this does not alter the fact that Paul emphasizes the con- 
gregation’s duty to look after its “holy”, who do not recognize the 
obligation to work. 

The effect this Christian communism made on the minds of 
non-believers is apparent from the story of Peregrinus Proteus, 
written in 165 A.D., by Lucian. The scoffer Lucian is of course 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 425 


not an unprejudiced observer; he reports much malicious gossip 
of a very improbable variety, relating for instance that Peregrinus 
had left his native city, Parium on the Hellespont, because he had 
murdered his own father. Since no accusation was ever made for 
this offense in court, the matter is at least quite doubtful. 

But after we have applied the necessary restrictions to Lucian’s 
report, enough still remains that is of great value because it not 
only shows how the Christian congregation impressed the pagans, 
but also affords glimpses of the actual life of the former. 

After Lucian has made a number of most malicious statements 
about Peregrinus, he tells how the latter became a voluntary exile 
after he had murdered his father, and drifted around in the 
world: 

“At this time he also became acquainted with the admirable 
wisdom of the Christians by intercourse with their priests and 
scribes in Palestine. They soon appeared mere children in com- 
parison with him; he became their prophet, the spokesman at 
their banquets (Giacaexnc), head of the synagogue (Lucian ap- 
parently draws no distinction between Jews and Christians, K.), 
all in one person; he commented a number of writings and ex- 
plained them to them, a number he wrote himself, in short, they 
took him for a God, made him their legislator and appointed him 
their head. Of course, they still venerate that great man who 
was crucified in Palestine, for having introduced this new religion 
(teAetyv).* For this reason Peregrinus was then arrested and 
thrown into prison, which gave him considerable prestige for the 
rest of his life, besides imparting to him his lying habits and his 
desire for fame, which became his dominant passions. 

“As he lay in prison, the Christians, believing this to be a great 


4 This sentence is contrary to the thought, and other objections may also be 
raised against it; particularly the words “of course’ (yovv). Furthermore, 
Suidas, a lexicographer of the Tenth Century, expressly states that Lucian had 
“calumniated Christ himself” in his biography of Peregrinus. But no such 
passage can be found in the variants that have been preserved. It seems rea- 
sonable to seek such a passage in the above sentence, and to assume that this 
was the place in which Lucian jeered at Christ, which scandalized pious souls, 
and induced them to transform the passage into its opposite while copying it. 
As a matter of fact, a number of students assume that this sentence in its 
present form is a Christian distortion. 


426 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


misfortune, left no stone unturned to help him escape. Finding 
this to be impossible, they lavished every possible care and solici- | 
tude upon him. From early in the morning you could see old 
women, widows and orphans, sitting outside the jail while their 
Elders bribed the wardens and spent the night with him. Many 
articles of food were brought to him, they exchanged their holy 
legends, and the dear Peregrinus, as he was still called, was a new 
Socrates in their eyes. Certain representatives of the Christian 
congregations even came from the Asiatic towns in order to sup- 
port him, to assist him in court, and to console him. In such 
cases, in which their brotherhood is involved, they show an in- 
credible zeal, in short, they spare no wealth. Peregrinus also 
received much money from them because of his imprisonment, 
and gained not a little thereby. 

“For these sad wretches live in the conviction that they will 
be altogether immortal and live forever, wherefore they despise 
death and often seek it voluntarily. Furthermore, their first 
legislator persuaded them that they had all become brothers since 
they had foresworn the Hellenic gods, and worshiped that crucified 
teacher (codiotyv) of theirs and lived by his laws; therefore 
they esteem all things as equally unimportant, considering them 
common possessions (koiva yyotvtat), without having any good 
reason for this view. If they are visited by a clever impostor, 
capable of utilizing this situation, he will soon become very rich, 
because of his ability to hoodwink these simple folk.” 

Of course all this may not be taken literally; it is probably 
no more true than the tales of the treasures accumulated by So- 
cialistic agitators from the pennies of the workers. The Christian 
congregation had first to become richer than it was, before any- 
one could become rich on it. But it is probably true that at that 
time it took good care of its agitators and organizers and that 
unscrupulous fellows took advantage of this condition. And we 
must also note what this implies with regard to communism in 
the congregation. 

Lucian then tells us that the Government of Syria liberated 
Peregrinus because the latter seemed so insignificant. Peregrinus 
thereupon returned to his native town, where he found his patri- 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 427 


mony considerably reduced. However, he still had a large sum 
of money, considered immense by his adherents, and estimated 
even by Lucian, who is by no means favorably disposed, at 15 
talents ($17,000). This sum he gave to the population of his 
native town, according to Lucian, in order to free himself from 
the accusation of patricide: 

“He spoke in the Popular Assembly of the Parians: he already 
had long hair, wore a dirty cloak, had a bag slung around him, a 
staff in his hand, and made in general a very theatrical impression. 
He appeared before them in this raiment and declared the entire 
property left him by his father to be the property of the people. 
When the people heard this, poor fellows whose mouths were 
watering for a division, they at once shouted that he alone was a 
friend of wisdom and of the nation, he alone a successor of 
Diogenes and Krates. But the mouths of his enemies were sealed, 
and anyone who would have recalled the incident of the murder 
would have been slain immediately. 

“He now set forth a homeless wanderer for the second time, 
the Christians supplying him plentifully with traveling money 
and following him everywhere, permitting him to suffer no want. 
He thus made his way for some time.” ° 

But finally he was excluded from the congregation, for the 
alleged reason that he had eaten forbidden foods. He was thus 
deprived of his means of subsistence, and attempted to regain 
his property, in which he was unsuccessful. A cynical and ascetic 
mendicant philsopher, he now wandered through Egypt, Italy, 
Greece, finally putting an end to his life in Olympia, after the 
games, in the presence of an audience invited for this spectacle, 
by the theatrical method of leaping into a burning pyre at mid- 
night, by the light of the moon. 

It is evident that the age in which Christianity arose was pro- 
ductive of singular creatures. But it would be doing an injustice 
to a man like Peregrinus to consider them as swindlers only; his 
voluntary death alone is an evidence to the contrary. Suicide 
as an advertising stunt certainly requires not only a boundless 


5Lucian, The Death of Peregrinus, 11-16. 


428 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


vanity and love of sensation, but also a bit of contempt for the 
world and disgust with life, or else it must be laid to insanity 
altogether. 

If Peregrinus Proteus, as depicted by Lucian, is not the real 
Peregrinus Proteus, but a caricature, the caricature is a brilliant 
one. The essence of caricature is not a mere distortion of appear- 
ances, but a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration of the char- 
acteristic and determining elements. The true caricaturist may 
not be a mere grotesque clown; he must see through things and 
recognize essential and significant elements in them. 

Thus Lucian has emphasized those phases of Peregrinus that 
were to become important for the entire class of the “holy and 
perfect” whose representative he was. They might have been 
impelled by the most varied, sometimes sublime, sometimes idiotic 
motives, appearing very unselfish to themselves, while behind their 
entire attitude to the congregation there was already the exploit- 
ing tendency observed by Lucian. The enrichment of the im- 
poverished “holy” by the communism of the congregation may 
in his days have still been an exaggeration; it was soon to become 
a reality, a reality that finally left far behind it the crudest ex- 
aggerations of the scoffer of its early stage. 

Lucian lays most emphasis on the ‘“‘wealth” acquired by the 
prophets; another pagan, a contemporary of Lucian, stresses their 
insanity. 

Celsus describes “how they prophesy in Pheenicia and Pales- 
tine”’: 

“There are many who, although they are without reputation 
or name, carry on at the slightest provocation, with the greatest 
ease, within and without the sacred places, as if they were seized 
with prophetic ecstasy; others, roaming about as beggars, and 
visiting the cities and military camps, offer the same spectacle. 
Each of them has the words at the tip of his tongue and uses them 
instantly: ‘I am God’, or ‘God’s son’, or ‘God’s spirit’. ‘I am 
come because the destruction of the world is already approaching, 
and you humans are going to destruction because of your unright- 
eousness. But I will save you, and you will soon behold me 
coming again with heavenly power! Blessed is he who now 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 429 


honors me! I shall consign all others to the eternal fire, the 
cities as well as the countries and their peoples. Those who will 
not recognize now the dooms impending over them, will soon 
change their minds in vain and lament! But those who have 
believed in me, them will I preserve forever!’ To these grandilo- 
quent threats they add curious, half idiotic and absolutely in- 
coherent words whose sense may not be understood by any 
man, however intelligent, so obscure and empty are they; but 
the first simpleton or mountebank that hears them can explain 
them as he may like . . . these alleged prophets whom I have 
more than once heard with my own ears have admitted their 
weaknesses to me, after I convinced them, and confessed that they 
had themselves invented all their inscrutable words.” ° 

Here again we are dealing with the amiable combination of 
swindler and prophet, but again we should be going too far if we 
should designate the entire business as an imposture. It merely 
indicates a general condition of the population which offered a 
good field of activity for impostors, but which also must have 
given rise to real cases of exaggerated and ecstatic feelings in 
minds easily aroused. 

Apostles as well as prophets probably were alike in this respect. 
But they differed in one important respect: the apostles had no 
permanent place of domicile; they wandered about homeless, 
whence their name (andotohoc, messenger, traveler, seafarer); 
the prophets, on the other hand, were the “local celebrities’. 
The apostle class must have developed first. While a congrega- 
tion was still small, it could not permanently support an agitator. 
As soon as its means for supporting him were exhausted, he had 
to go elsewhere. And while the number of congregations was 
small, the important task was that of founding new congregations 
in cities as yet without them. The extension of the organization 
into new fields, hitherto untouched, and the maintenance of a 
connection between them, was the great task of these traveling 
agitators, the apostles. They are particularly responsible for the 
international character of the Christian organization, which con- 


6 Cited by Harnack in his edition of the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles 
(Die Lehre der Zwoélf Apostel), p. 130 ff. 


430 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


tributed so much to its permanence. A local organization could 
be destroyed, as it had no outside support. But it was hardly 
possible, with the resources then at the disposal of the state au- 
thority, to persecute all the Christian congregations in all parts 
of the Empire. There always remained a few who could supply 
material aid to the persecuted, and in which the persecuted could 
seek refuge. This was due above all to the apostles who were con- 
stantly on the move, and whose number must at times have been 
considerable. 

Local agitators, concerned entirely with organizational work, 
could not arise until certain congregations had attained such size 
that their means permitted them to maintain such agitators per- 
manently. 

The larger the number of cities containing Christian congre- 
gations, and the larger the membership of the latter, the more 
did the prophets flourish, and the smaller was the field of activity 
of the apostles, who had operated chiefly in the cities as yet con- 
taining no congregations or only small ones. The prestige of the 
apostles necessarily declined. But there must have been a sort 
of opposition between them and the prophets. For the means of 
the congregations were limited. The more the apostles took for 
themselves, the less was left for the prophets. The latter there- 
fore necessarily strove to diminish the already declining prestige 
of the apostles, to restrict the gifts allotted to them, and, on the 
other hand, to raise their own prestige and formulate definite 
claims on the gifts of the believers. 

These efforts are clearly apparent in the Doctrine (Didache) 
of the Twelve Apostles, already several times cited, a document 
written between 135 and 170 A.D. We read in this document: 

“Every apostle that comes to you shall be received as the 
Master. But he must stay not longer than one day, at most two 
days. But if he remains for three days, he is a false prophet. 
And when the apostle leaves you, he shall receive nothing except 
so much bread as he needs on his journey to his next stop. But 
if he demands money, he is a false prophet. 

“Do not tempt nor test any prophet who speaks in the spirit; 
for every sin will be forgiven, but this sin will not be forgiven. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 431 


But not every man speaking in the spirit is a prophet, but only 
if he has the deportment of the master, therefore the prophet 
and the false prophet may be distinguished by their conduct. And 
no prophet who, impelled by God’s spirit, orders a meal (Harnack 
says: for the poor), will partake of it unless he be a false prophet. 
But every prophet that teaches the truth is a false prophet if he 
does not practice what he preaches. And every prophet, tried 
and true, who acts with respect to the earthly mysteries of the 
church, but does not teach others to do all that he does himself, 
let him not be judged by you; for he has his judgment with God. 
The ancient (Christian) prophets acted thus always.” 

The fact that this passage probably contains a reference to 
free love, which was to be permitted to the prophets if they 
did not require the congregation to emulate their example, we 
have already seen. 

We read further: 

“But he who says in the spirit: Give me money or some other 
thing, heed him not; but if he requests gifts for other sufferers, 
no one shall judge him. 

“But every man who comes in the name of the Lord (in other 
words, every comrade, K.), let him be admitted; but you shall 
test him and distinguish the true and the false, for you must 
have understanding. If the newcomer is a transient visitor, help 
him, but he shall not stay longer than two or three days with you 
at most. If he wishes to settle among you, let him work and eat, 
if he is an artisan. But if he knows no trade, see to it to the best 
of your knowledge that no Christian shall live idle among you. 
If he will not accept this condition, he is one who is drawing 
profit from Christ. Avoid such.” 

It was therefore already considered necessary to see to it that 
the congregation was not overrun and exploited by beggars from 
other places. But this was to apply only to common beggars: 

“But every true prophet that wishes to settle among you is 
worthy of his nourishment. Likewise, a true teacher, like any 
worker, is worth his nourishment. All the first fruits of thy 
wine-presses and threshing floors, of thy cattle and sheep, thou 
shalt take and give them to the prophets, for they are your high 


432 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


priests. But if you have no prophet, give them to the poor. 
When thou makest dough, take the first piece of it and give in 
accordance with the commandment. Likewise, when thou openest 
a vessel of wine or oil, take the first outflow and give it to the 
prophets. But of money and clothing and other possessions, take 
a share according to your judgment and give in accordance with 
the commandment.” 

The apostles are treated very shabbily in these regulations. It 
is not yet possible to suppress them altogether, but the congre- 
gation in which they present themselves is to dispatch them as 
quickly as possible. While an ordinary transient comrade may 
claim entertainment by the congregation for two or three days, 
the unhappy apostle gets only one or two days. Money he may 
not ask for at all. 

The prophet, on the other hand, is “worthy of his nourish- 
ment”! He must be supported from the treasury of the congre- 
gation. But besides this, believers are obliged to deliver to him 
all the first fruits of wine, bread, oil and cloth, even of their 
money income. 

This accords very well with the description given by Lucian 
just at the time when the Didache was written, of the prosperous 
life of Peregrinus, who also had declared himself a prophet. 

While the prophets were thus displacing the apostles, they were 
themselves encountering a new competition in the teachers, whose 
importance when the Didache was written was still quite small, 
for they are only mentioned in passing. 

In addition to these three elements, there were also others 
active in the congregation that are not mentioned in the Didache. 
Paul mentions them all in his First Epistle to the Corinthians 
(xii, 28): 

“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly 
prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of heal- 
ings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.” 

Of these, the gifts of helps and governments became quite im- 
portant, but not those of quackery and healing, which probably 
did not take, in the congregation, any forms that distinguished 
them from those generally current at the time. The rise of the 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION § 433 


teachers is connected with the admission of wealthy and cultured 
elements to the congregation. The apostles and prophets were 
ignorant people who kept on talking, without ever studying the 
subjects of their remarks. The cultured probably merely turned 
up their noses at this. Soon persons were found among the 
number of the latter who, attracted either by the charitable 
nature of the congregation, or by its power, or possibly by the 
general character of the Christian doctrine, attempted to raise 
the latter to a higher stage of what was then known as science, 
which, to be Sure, no longer amounted to much. These persons 
became teachers. It is they who first sought to fill Christianity 
with the spirit of Seneca or of Philo, of which it had previously 
not had too much. 

But they were regarded with envy and dislike by the body of 
the congregations, probably also by most of the apostles and 
prophets; the relation was perhaps not dissimilar to that between 
the “horny hand of toil” and the “intellectuals”. Nevertheless, 
the teachers would undoubtedly have secured more and more 
prestige with the increase of the wealthy and cultured elements 
in the congregations, and would ultimately have done away with 
the prophets and apostles. 

But before matters reached this point, all three categories were 
absorbed by a power that was beginning to exceed them all in 
strength, but which the Didache only mentions in passing: the 
Bishop. 


d. The Bishop 


The beginnings of the Christian congregations were not unlike 
the circumstances attending every new proletarian organization. 
Its founders, the apostles, had to conduct all the work of the 
congregation themselves, propaganda as well as organization and 
administration. But with the growth of the congregation, the 
need for a division of labor became felt, the necessity to assign 
certain functions to definite functionaries. 

First, the administration of the income and expenses of the 
congregation was made a separate congregational office. 


434 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


Propaganda might be carried on by any member as he thought 
best. Even those who were exclusively concerned with propa- 
ganda had, in the Second Century, as we have just seen, not yet 
been intrusted with this task by the congregation. Apostles and 
prophets were self-appointed to their callings, or, as it seemed 
to them, they followed God’s voice alone. The prestige enjoyed 
in the congregation by the individual propagandist, whether 
apostle or prophet, as well as the amount of his income, depended 
on the impression made by him, in other words, on his personality. 

On the other hand, the maintenance of party discipline, if 
we may call it so, was a matter for the congregation itself, so 
long as it was small and all the members knew each other. The 
congregation itself decided on the admission of new members; it 
was immaterial who should conduct the initial ceremony, which 
was that of immersion. The congregation itself decided on ex- 
pulsions, maintained peace among the comrades, decided disputes 
that might arise among them. It was the tribunal before which 
all accusations made by comrades against comrades had to be 
tried. The Christians were not less suspicious of state courts 
than Socialists are now. Their social views also were in sharp con- 
trast with those of the state judges. A Christian would have 
considered it a sin to appear before a state judge to seek his 
rights, particularly in a case involving litigation with a comrade. 
Thus the germ of a special judicial power was planted, a power 
always claimed by the Church over its adherents, as opposed to 
the state courts. Of course, in this matter also, the original 
character of Church law was later completely distorted, for, in the 
beginnings of the Christian congregation, it signified the abolition 
of all class justice, the trial of the accused by his peers. 

In the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (vi, 1-4), we 
read: 

“Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law 
before the unjust, and not before the saints (meaning the com- 
vades)? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? 
and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge 
the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? 
how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 435 


judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who 
are least esteemed in the Church.” 

The maintenance of discipline and peace in the congregation 
at first had as little form and as little connection with any definite 
office or any definite authority as had the propaganda itself. 

But the economic factor required regulation even at an early 
stage, the more since the congregation was not a mere propaganda 
organization, but from the very start also a mutual aid association. 

According to the Acts of the Apostles, the need was soon felt 
in the Jerusalem congregation of intrusting certain comrades with 
the collection and distribution of members’ gifts, particularly the 
serving of meals at table. Diakoneo (Staxovéw) means to serve, 
particularly at table. Obviously this was at first the chief task 
of the deacons, as the common meal was the chief function of 
primitive Christian communism. 

We read in the Acts of the Apostles: 

“And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multi- 
plied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the 
Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily minis- 
tration (napebewpotvto év TH Staxovig). Then the twelve (apostles, 
then actually only eleven, if we are to take the accounts in the 
Gospels at their face value) called the multitude of the disciples 
unto them and said: It is not reason that we should leave the 
word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out 
among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost 
and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business” (vi, 1-3). 

The report informs us that this suggestion was carried out, 
which seems quite plausible, as it is in the nature of the case. 

The apostles were therefore relieved of their service as waiters 
in the dining-hall, which they had originally been obliged to per- 
form in addition to propaganda, and which became burdensome 
to them with the increase of the congregation. But the newly 
appointed waiters (deacons) also necessarily had to divide their 
tasks. Service at table and other serving and cleansing operations 
were quite a different matter from the collection and administra- 
tion of members’ dues. The latter involved a position of trust 
of the highest order, particularly in a large congregation with 


436 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


increased income. ‘This post required a considerable measure 
of honesty, business knowledge, and kindliness, coupled with 
severity. 

An administrator was therefore appointed over the deacons. 

The appointment of such an administrator was inevitable. 
Every organization having property or income must have such an 
administrator. In the brotherhoods and societies of Asia 
Minor, the administrative and financial officials bore the title of 
Epimeletes or Episkopos (émicxomoc, observer, overseer). The 
same name was also applied in the government of cities to certain 
administrative officials. Hatch, who traces this evolution in detail, 
and describes it in a book to which we owe much information on 
this subject,? quotes a Roman Jurist Charisius as follows: 
“Episcopi (bishops) are those who supervise the bread and other 
purchasable things, serving for the daily sustenance of the city 
population” (episcopi, qui praesunt pani et caeteris venalibus 
rebus quae civitatum populis at quotidianum victum usui sunt). 

The city bishop therefore was an administrative official par- 
ticularly concerned with the proper feeding of the population. It 
was natural to give the same title to the administrator of the 
Christian “‘people’s house”’. 

We have already read of the common treasury of the congre- 
gation, mentioned by Tertullian. We learn from the First Apol- 
ogy of Justin the Martyr (born about too a.p.) that the admin- 
istration of this treasury was assigned to a special trustee. 
Tertullian says: 

“The wealthy and willing may give at their discretion of their 
possessions, the gifts being collected and deposited with the over- 
seer; the latter supports therewith the orphans and widows, those 
in distress because of illness or other reason, prisoners and 
strangers in the city, and takes care of all the needy in general.” 
Much labor, much responsibility, but also much power was thus 
placed in the hands of the bishop. 


7Edwin Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches, eight 
lectures delivered before the university of Oxford, in the year 1880. London, 
1882, p. 38. Kautsky quotes a German translation and commentary by Adolf 
.Harnack (Giessen, 1883).—TRANSLATOR. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 437 


In the beginnings of the congregation the office of the bishop 
as well as that of his aides and other functionaries of the con- 
gregation, was an honorary office, discharged without compensa- 
tion in addition to each official’s regular trade. 

“The bishops and presbyters of those early days kept banks, 
practised medicine, wrought as silversmiths, tended sheep, or sold 
their goods in open market. . . . The chief existing enactments 
of early local councils on the point are that bishops are not to 
huckster their goods from market to market, nor are they to use 
their position to buy cheaper and sell dearer than other people.” ® 

But as a congregation grew, it became impossible to discharge 
its numerous economic functions as an avocation. The bishop 
was made an employee of the congregation and received a salary 
in payment. 

But this rendered permanent his tenure of office. The congre- 
gation had the right to remove him if he did not fulfill its require- 
ments, but it is evident that some reluctance would be felt in 
depriving of his position a man who had been taken away from 
his calling. On the other hand, the administration of the con- 
gregation’s business required a certain degree of skill and an 
acquaintance with the conditions of the congregation, which could 
be acquired only by long activity in office. It was therefore 
necessary, in order to facilitate the discharge of the congregation’s 
business, to avoid any unnecessary change in the office of bishop. 

But the longer the bishop remained in office, the more his pres- 
tige and power necessarily increased, if he was equal to the 
demands of his office. 

He did not remain the only permanent official of the congre- 
gation. The office of the deacons also could not permanently be 
held as an avocation. The deacons also were paid, like the bishop, 
from the treasury of the congregation, but were his subordinates. 
The bishop, who would have to work with them, was for this 
reason consulted in their appointment. Thus the bishop had the 
privilege of distributing jobs in the congregation, which neces- 
sarily increased his influence. 

_ As the congregation increased, it became impossible for it to 
8 Hatch, op. cit., pp. 151, 152. 


438 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


look after matters of its own discipline. Not only the numbers 
of the members increased, but also the varieties of their occupa- 
tions. While at first all constituted a single family, in which 
everyone was acquainted with all the other comrades, all being 
completely united with each other in thought and feeling, thus 
composing an élite of self-sacrificing enthusiasts, this condition 
gradually changed with the increase of the congregation. The 
most varied elements gained admission, elements from different 
classes and regions, often strange and without understanding for 
each other, sometimes even hostile to each other—such as slaves 
and slave-owners—also elements that were not impelled by en- 
thusiasm, but by crafty calculation, to take advantage of the 
credulity and generosity of the comrades. In addition, there 
were differences of views—all this necessarily produced disputes 
of all kinds, disputes that often could not be decided by a simple 
discussion in the gathering of the congregation, but required 
rather long investigations of the actual facts. 

Therefore a committee, the committee of elders, or presbyters, 
was intrusted with the task of maintaining discipline in the con- 
gregation and settling disputes arising within it, reporting to the 
congregation on the expulsion of unworthy members, perhaps also 
on the admission of new members, whose admission this com- 
mittee celebrated by the initiating ceremony, baptism. 

The bishop, who was precisely informed on all congregational 
matters, was the chairman of this committee. He thus obtained 
an influence over the moral policing and jurisdiction of the con- 
gregation. Where the presbyters (the word priest is derived from 
presbyter), by reason of the increasing size of the congregation, 
became its permanent paid officials, they were placed immediately 
under the jurisdiction of the guardian of the congregation’s treas- 
ury, the bishop, as were also the deacons. 

In a large city, the congregation might easily become so large 
as to require more than one building to house its gatherings. It 
was then divided into districts; in each district gathering, a deacon 
had to wait upon the members, while a presbyter was delegated 
by the bishop to conduct the gathering and represent the bishop. 
The case in the suburbs and villages was similar. Where these 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 439 


lay close to a congregation like that of Rome or Alexandria, the 
influence of the latter was overwhelming, and the neighboring 
congregations fell directly under the influence of the great city 
and its bishop, who sent out his deacons and presbyters to them. 

Thus there was gradually formed a congregational bureaucracy 
headed by the bishop, which became more and more independent 
and powerful. One had to have the greatest prestige in the con- 
gregation to be elected to a position that was so much sought 
after. Once the position had been gained, it conferred so much 
power on the incumbent that any bishop with a little intelligence 
and ability could impose his will more and more, particularly in 
personal matters, the more since his tendencies had from the first 
coincided with those of the majority of his congregation. 

The result was that he acquired authority not only over per- 
sons who discharged functions in the administration of the con- 
gregation, but also over such as were concerned with propaganda 
and theory. 

We have seen how the apostles were forced aside in the Second 
Century by the prophets. But both, apostles and prophets, prob- 
ably came into frequent conflict with the bishop, who would not 
hesitate on such occasions to let them feel his financial and moral 
power. He probably found no difficulty in forbidding apostles 
and prophets and even teachers to sojourn in the congregation 
as soon as they displayed tendencies that did not please him. 
And this probably occurred very frequently in the case of apostles 
and prophets. 

The bishops, in other words, the holders of the cash, were of 
course not chosen by preference from the unworldly enthusiasts, 
but from among sober, businesslike, practical men. These men 
knew the value of money, and therefore also the utility of having 
many wealthy communicants. It is natural to suppose that it 
was these men who represented the opportunistic revisionism in 
the Christian congregation, that they strove to attenuate the 
hatred against the rich man in the congregation, to weaken the 
teachings of the congregation to an extent that would cause the 
wealthy to feel more at home in it. 


440 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


The wealthy of that day were also the cultured. The act of 
adapting the congregation to the requirements of the rich and 
cultured meant a weakening of the influence of the apostles and 
prophets and a reducing of their tendencies to absurdity, as well 
as of the tendencies of those who fought the wealthy through 
mere cussedness. But this effect was also produced on those who 
fought them with an enthusiastic and profound hatred, the more 
since they had given their entire property to the congregation, 
while they were still wealthy, in order to realize their high com- 
munistic ideal. 

In the struggle between rigorism and opportunism, the latter 
was victorious; in other words, the bishops were victorious over 
the apostles and prophets, whose liberty of motion, whose very 
right to live, perceptibly decreased in the congregation. Officials 
of the congregation displaced them more and more. Since at 
first every member had had the right to take the floor in the 
gathering of the congregation and to engage in propaganda activi- 
ties, an official of the congregation might also display such activity, 
which they probably did on a large scale. It is clear that mem- 
bers who stood out from the nameless mass as well-known speak- 
ers had a better chance to be elected to office in the congregation 
than entirely unknown members. On the other hand, those elected 
probably also were required to carry on propaganda work in 
addition to their administrative and judicial activities. Many 
administrative officials probably were more active in the former 
function than in the work that was theirs originally, since the 
growth of the congregation created new positions which relieved 
the others. Thus the deacons were enabled in many cases to 
devote more attention to propaganda work, if their functions in 
large congregations were taken charge of by. special hospitals, 
orphan asylums, poor houses, inns for members from other towns. 

On the other hand, it became necessary, precisely because of 
the growth of the congregation and its economic functions, to give 
its officials some training in preparation for their office. It would 
now have been too costly and dangerous to permit every man to 
acquire wisdom only by his actual experiences. The new supply 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 441 


of congregational officials was trained in the house of the bishop 
and there made acquainted with the duties of Church offices. 
Where the officials had also to conduct propaganda in addition 
to their official business, it was natural to train them for this job 
also in the house of the bishop, to instruct them in the teachings 
of the congregation. 

Thus the bishop became the center not only of the economic, 
but also of the propaganda activity of the congregation, ideology 
being once more obliged to bend the knee to economic conditions. 

There was now developed an official doctrine, recognized and 
disseminated by the congregational bureaucracy, which applied 
repressive measures more and more to all doctrines with which 
it did not agree. 

This does not mean that the official doctrine was always hostile 
to intelligent opinion. 

The tendencies opposed by the bishops were those of the orig- 
inal proletarian communism, hostile to state and property. In 
accordance with the ignorance of the lower classes of the popula- 
tion, their credulity, the incompatibility of their hopes with 
reality, it was precisely these tendencies that were associated 
with a special faith in miracles and with an exalted mental state. 
Much as was accomplished by the official Church in this field, the 
sects which it persecuted in the first few centuries far exceeded 
it in their insane exaggerations. 

The sympathy with the oppressed, the aversion to all oppres- 
sion, must not mislead us into regarding every opposition to the 
official Church, every form of heresy, as certain to represent a 
higher mental state. 

The formulation of an official doctrine of the Church was also 
facilitated by certain other circumstances. 

We are but poorly informed as to the doctrines taught in the 
early beginnings of the Christian congregation. To judge by 
mere indications, they were not very extensive, and of very simple 
nature. Surely we may not assume that they already contained 
everything later represented as the teaching of Jesus in the 


Gospels. 


442 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


While we may perhaps go so far as to admit the probability 
that Jesus lived and was crucified, probably because of an 
attempted insurrection, there is practically nothing else that can 
be said about him. What is reported as his teaching has so little 
evidence to support it, is so contradictory and so little original, 
so full of commonplace moral maxims then current in the mouths 
of many, that not the slightest trace can be assigned with cer- 
tainty to the actual teachings of Jesus. Concerning these we 
know nothing. 

On the other hand, we have all the more right to imagine the 
beginnings of the Christian congregations as similar to those of 
socialistic organizations, to which they present many other simi- 
larities. A glance at these beginnings never reveals to us an 
overpowering personality whose doctrine becomes the rule for the 
later history of the movement, but always a chaotic germ, an 
uncertain, instinctive seeking and groping of numerous prole- 
tarians, none perceptibly more prominent than the others, all 
moved forward on the whole by the same tendencies, but often 
displaying the most striking individual deviations. Such a picture 
is, for instance, presented by the beginnings of the proletarian 
socialistic movement in the ’thirties and ’forties of the Nineteenth 
Century. Thus, the League of the Righteous, the later League 
of Communists, was already an institution of some age before 
_ Marx and Engels gave it a definite theoretical basis in the Com- 
munist Manifesto. And this League itself was only the continua- 
tion of earlier proletarian tendencies in France and England. 
Had it not been for Marx and Engels, its teachings would have 
continued to remain in the stage of ferment for a long time. The 
two authors of the Communist Manifesto were only enabled to 
secure their dominant and determining position by virtue of their 
mastery of the science of their times. 

We have nothing to show—on the contrary, it is absolutely 
impossible—that a truly cultured person presided over the cradle 
of Christianity. It is expressly reported of Jesus that he did not 
surpass his comrades, plain proletarians, in education. Paul does 
not refer to his superior knowledge, but to his martyr’s death, 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 443 


and his resurrection. This death made a profound impression on 
the Christians. 

The apostles and prophets are not repeating definite doctrines 
handed down to them by others, but speak just as the spirit moves 
them. They express the most varied views; the early congrega- 
tions are filled with bickering and dispute. 

Paul writes to the Corinthians: 

“Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise one, that you 
come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of 
all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be 
divisions (oxiouata) among you; and I partly believe it. For 
there must be also heresies among you, that they which are 
approved (doxiyot) may be made manifest among you” (I Corin- 
thians xi, 17-19). 

This need for various tendencies, heresies (Paul uses the word 
aioeceic) in the congregation was later by no means recognized 
by the official Church. In the Second Century this vague seeking 
and groping comes to an end. The congregation has a history 
behind it, and in the course of this history various doctrines of 
faith have come out victorious, gaining recognition among the 
great mass of the congregation. Furthermore, educated persons 
now enter the congregation; on the one hand, they put the history 
and doctrines of the movement, transmitted to them by word of 
mouth, into written form, thus preserving them against further 
changes; on the other hand, they elevate the congregation’s 
teachings, quite simple as they find them, to the level of the 
science of their time, which is still quite low, fill these teachings 
with their philosophy, thus making them palatable to the cul- 
tured also, and fortify them against the objections of pagan 
criticism. 

He who would now become a teacher in the Christian congre- 
gation had to possess a certain amount of knowledge. The 
apostles and prophets, who had merely fumed about the sinfulness 
of the world and predicted its early collapse, could no longer 
compete with them. 

Thus the unhappy apostles and prophets were restricted and 


444 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


oppressed from all quarters. Their petty business soon had to 
succumb to the immense mechanism of the Christian bureaucracy; 
they disappeared. But the teachers were deprived of their free- 
dom and made subordinate to the bishop. Soon no one dared 
open his mouth in the gathering of the congregation, the Church,? 
without previous permission from the bishop; i.e., no one outside 
of the congregation’s bureaucracy, which was managed by the 
bishop, in other words, the clergy,*® which was becoming more 
and more distinct from the mass of members, the laymen,"* and 
assuming a superior position. The metaphor of the shepherd and 
his flock becomes popular, and the flock means a flock of such 
docile sheep that they permit themselves to be driven and shorn 
without resistance. The supreme shepherd is the bishop. 

The international character of the movement also contributed 
to an increase in the power of the bishop. It had formerly been 
the apostles who had maintained the international cohesion of 
the various congregations, by their constant traveling among them. 
But as the apostles were relegated to the background, it became 
the more important to find other means of cementing and uniting 
the congregations. If disputes should arise, where a common 
action or common regulation were required in any matter, con- 
gresses of delegates from the congregations would meet, provincial 
congresses, and even imperial congresses, beginning with the 
Second Century. 

At first these gatherings served only for discussion and mutual 
agreement. They could not pass resolutions that were binding. 
Each individual congregation felt itself to be supreme. Cyprian, 
in the first half of the Third Century, proclaimed the absolute 
independence of the congregation. But it is clear that the major- 
ity from the first must have swayed the congregation. Gradually 
this superiority attained binding power, the resolutions of the 
majority became a law for all the congregations represented, they 


9 Ecclesia, éxxdnola, originally means a gathering of the people. 

10 Kleros (xdnpos), the bequest, the property of God, the people of God, those 
chosen by God. 

11 From laos (Ados), the people. 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 445 


all resolved themselves into a single united body. All that was 
lost by the individual congregation in its freedom of action was 
now gained in the strength of the movement as a whole. 

Thus the Catholic Church was created.*” Congregations that 
refused to comply with the decisions of the congresses (synods, 
councils) were driven out of the Catholic Church organization, 
being excluded by the central body. But an individual who was 
expelled from his congregation, could no longer find admittance 
to other congregations. He was expelled from all the congrega- 
tions. And the effects of expulsion or excommunication were now 
far more severe. 

The right to expel members who opposed the purposes of the 
organization will surely not be denied to the Church while it was 
a specific party or organization existing by the side of many other 
parties or organizations within the state, pursuing a specific aim. 
It could not have attained this aim if it had renounced the right 
to expel anyone opposing its goal. 

But things were different when the Church had become an 
organization embracing the entire state, the whole of European 
society, of which the nations constituted only the various parts. 
Expulsion from the Church now was equivalent to expulsion from 
human society; it might amount to a sentence of death. 

The right to exclude members who do not recognize the objects 
of the organization is necessary for the formation and successful 
operation of definite parties in the state, for an active and fruitful 
political life therefore, for a healthy political development; but 
it becomes a means of preventing party formations, for rendering 
impossible all political life and political development, if, instead 
of being utilized by various parties in the state, it becomes a 
function of the state itself, or of an organization of state-wide 
proportions. But it is pure nonsense to demand from the various 
parties, for all the members of an organization, the same freedom 
of opinion that every democratic party must demand from the 
state. A party tolerating all possible opinions in its ranks ceases 


12 Catholic, from holos (dos), complete, full, and from the preposition kata 
(xara) meaning downward, concerning, belonging to. Katholikos means per- 
taining to the whole; the Catholic Church therefore is the Church as a whole. 


446 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


to be a party. But the state, when it prosecutes certain views, 
itself becomes a party. Democracy must demand not that parties 
cease to be parties, but that the state cease to be a party. 

No objection may be made from a democratic standpoint to 
excommunications by the Church, while the Church remains 
merely one of several parties. He who does not believe in the 
doctrines of the Church, who will not comply with its rules, has 
no place in the Church. Democracy has no right to demand 
tolerance of the Church—while the Church contents itself to 
remain a party among many other parties, unless the state takes 
sides with the Church or identifies itself with it. Then a democ- 
racy of the Church policy must be introduced, not a demand for 
the toleration of unbelievers in the Church, which would be only 
a weak half-measure. 

But while no objection could be raised from the democratic 
standpoint to the Church’s right of excommunication per se, be- 
fore it became a state Church, much might already be said against 
the manner in which this right was applied. For it was no longer 
the great mass of the members, but the bureaucracy, by whom 
excommunication was applied. The more damage could thus be 
done to the individual, the more did the power of the ecclesiastical 
bureaucracy and of its head, the bishop, grow. 

The latter’s power increased also by virtue of the fact that he 
was the delegate of his congregation at ecclesiastical congresses. 
The bishop’s power therefore begins simultaneously with the 
Councils, and these were gatherings of bishops from the very 
start. 

The prestige and authority enjoyed by the bishop because of 
his administration of the congregation’s funds and his appointing 
and governing the entire administrative, judicial, propaganda, and 
learned apparatus of the congregational bureaucracy, was not 
supplemented by the authority held by the whole, the Catholic 
Church, as opposed to the part, the congregation. The bishop 
approached the congregation with all the authority of the Church 
behind him. As the organization of the entire Church became 
more rigid, the congregations became more powerless as opposed 
to the bishops, at least in cases where the latter represented the 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 447 


tendencies of the majority of his colleagues. ‘This association 
of the bishops entirely took away the rights of the laity.” ** 

The bishops were not wrong in asserting that their authority 
came from the apostles, and-in considering themselves as their 
successors. The bishops, like the apostles before them, were the 
international and unifying element among all the congregations 
and it is precisely this fact that gave them much of their influence 
and power over individual congregations. 

Even the last remnant of the original democracy of the con- 
gregation now soon disappeared, namely, the right to elect the 
officials that were needed. With the increase of the independence 
and power of the bishop and his adherents among the congre- 
gation, it became easier for him to persuade the latter to elect 
persons suitable to him. It was actually the bishop who filled 
these offices. But in the election of the bishop himself, candi- 
dates proposed by the clergy had the best prospects from the 
start, owing to the clergy’s power in the congregation. Finally 
it came to pass that only the clergy elected the bishop, the mass 
of members of the congregation retaining only the right to approve 
or reject this election. But even this gradually became a mere 
formality. The congregation was finally degraded to a mere 
claque, who, when the elected bishop was presented by the clergy, 
were obliged to greet him with jubilant applause. 

This meant the final destruction of the democratic organization 
of the congregation, by confirming the absolute power of the 
clergy, and completing its transformation from a humble “serv- 
ant of the servants of God” to their absolute master. 

It was natural that the property of the congregation now should 
actually become the property of its administrators, of course not 
their personal property, but that of the bureaucracy as a body. 
The property of the Church ceased to be a congregational prop- 


18 Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, 
London and New York, vol. ii, p. 59. As an example of the great power 
attained by the bishop over his congregation, Harnack cites the incident of a 
Bishop Trophimus. When the latter was converted to paganism in a period of 
persecution, the greater part of his congregation went with him. “But when 
he returned to the fold and did penance, the others followed him again, none 
of whom would have come back to the Church if Trophimus had not led them.” 


448 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


erty of the members. It became the property of the clergy. This 
transformation found powerful support in, and was accelerated 
by, the state recognition of Christianity in the beginning of the 
Fourth Century. But, on the other hand, the recognition of the 
Catholic Church by the emperors was only a consequence of the 
progress made by the power of the bureaucracy and of the 
bishop’s absolute power within the bureaucracy. 

As long as the Church was a democratic organization, it was 
absolutely opposed to the imperial despotism in the Roman Em- 
pire. On the other hand, the bureaucracy of bishops, which abso- 
lutely ruled and exploited the people, was a very good instrument 
for imperial despotism. Furthermore, the latter could not ignore 
the Church, but had to come to terms with it, as otherwise the 
Church might have grown over its head. 

The clergy had become a power that every ruler of the Empire 
had to reckon with. Among the various pretenders to the throne 
before the civil wars in the beginning of the Fourth Century, Con- 
stantine, who had made an alliance with the ecclesiastical clergy, 
was the victorious one. 

The bishop now became the master, ruling the empire by the 
side of the emperors. The emperors often presided in the Coun- 
cils of Bishops, but in exchange they placed the state authority 
at the disposal of the bishops for carrying out the decisions of 
the councils and the excommunications. 

Simultaneously, the Church now attained the rights of a legal 
personage capable of holding and inheriting property (321 A.D.). 
Its proverbial appetite was thus enormously stimulated, church 
property grew apace. But the. exploitation practiced by the 
Church also increased. 

Thus the organization of a proletarian, subversive communism 
gave rise to the most faithful support of despotism and exploita- 
tion, a source of new despotism, of new exploitation. 

The victorious Christian congregation was at every point the. 
precise opposite of that congregation which had been founded 
three centuries before by poor Galilean fishermen and peasants 
and Jerusalem proletarians. The crucified Messiah became the 
firmest prop of that debased and infamous society whose complete 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 449 


destruction the messianic congregation had expected him to 
accomplish. 


e. The Monastery 


The Catholic Church, particularly as it had been recognized 
by the state, transformed the tendencies of the original messianic 
congregation into their precise opposite; but this was not done 
by peaceful means, without resistance and struggle. The social 
conditions that brought about the democratic communism of the 
primitive Christians continued to exist, in fact, became more 
aggravating and tormenting as the Empire dissolved. 

We have seen that voices protesting against the new con- 
ception had made themselves heard from the very start. But when 
the innovation had become the dominant and official attitude of 
the Church, not tolerating other views among the congregation, 
new democratic and communistic sects again and again arose by 
the side of the Catholic Church. Thus, for example, at the time 
when this Church was recognized by Constantine, the sect of 
the Circumcelliones became widespread in Northern Africa, 
ecstatic mendicants who pushed to the extreme the struggle of 
the Donatist Sect against the State Church and the state itself, 
preaching hostility to all the wealthy and powerful. As in Galilee 
at the time of Christ, so in Northern Africa in the Fourth Cen- 
tury, the peasant population rose in desperation against its op- 
pressors, and the banditry practiced by numerous bands shows 
the manner in which their protest expressed itself. As had 
formerly been the case with the Zealots, and perhaps also with the 
first adherents of Jesus, the Circumcelliones now set for these 
bands the goal of liberation and freedom from all oppression. 
With extreme audacity they gave battle even to the imperial 
troops, who sought, hand in hand with Catholic clergymen, to put 
down the insurrection, which lasted several decades. 

But this effort failed, as did every other effort to introduce 
communism into the Church again by peaceful or violent means. 
They all were defeated by the same causes which had finally 
transmuted the primitive communism into its opposite, causes 
which continued to exist side by side with the stimulus producing 


450 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


such efforts. While this stimulus was increased by the rising 
distress, it must not be forgotten that the Church’s resources were 
also increasing, enabling the Church to shield an increasingly 
large portion of the proletariat from the worst temptations by 
means of its charitable institutions, thus making the proletariat 
dependent on the clergy, and corrupting it and stifling all enthu- 
siasm and all higher ideals within it. 

When the Church became a State Church, a tool of despotism 
and exploitation more powerful and more gigantic than any that 
had yet appeared in history, the doom of all communistic tend- 
encies within it seemed finally sealed. And yet these tendencies 
were to draw new strength precisely from the State Church. 

Up to the time of its recognition by the state, the spread of 
the Christian congregations had as a rule been limited to the 
great cities; only in these could they maintain themselves in 
periods of persecution. In the provinces, where it is easier to 
observe each individual, secret organizations may maintain them- 
selves only when they enjoy the support of the entire population, 
as, for example, in the case of the Irish secret bodies in the last 
few centuries, in opposition to the English yoke. A minority 
opposition movement in society has always encountered the great- 
est difficulties in the provinces, and this applies also to the Chris- 
tian movement in the first three centuries. 

The obstacles to its spread in the provinces disappeared when 
Christianity ceased to be an opposition movement and was recog- 
nized by the state. From this time on nothing stood in the way 
of the organization of Christian congregations in the provinces. 
For three centuries Christianity—like Judaism—had been almost 
exclusively a city religion. Now for the first time it became a 
religion of the peasants also. 

Together with Christianity, its communistic tendencies invaded 
the provinces, finding different and far more favorable conditions 
than in the city, as we have already seen in our discussion of 
Essenism. The latter immediately awoke to new life in a Chris- 
tian form, as soon as the possibility of open communistic organi- 
zations was offered in the provinces, which indicates how strong 
was the want it fulfilled. Precisely at the time when Christianity 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION $451 


was recognized by the state, in the beginning of the Fourth Cen- 
tury, the first monasteries were established in Egypt, soon fol- 
lowed by others in many parts of the Empire. 

This form of communism was soon not only not opposed by 
the ecclesiastical and national authorities, but even favored by 
them, as the communistic experiments in America in the first half 
of the Nineteenth Century were similarly not unsympathetic to 
the governments of France and England. They could not fail to 
gain by having the restless communistic agitators of their large 
cities seclude themselves from the world, to devote themselves 
to a peaceful cultivation of cabbages in the wilderness. 

Unlike the communistic experiments of the Owenites, Four- 
ierists and Cabetists in America, the experiments of the Egyptian 
peasant Anthony and his disciples met with the most brilliant 
success, as did also the peasant communistic colonies in the United 
States in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, which were 
very similar to the Egyptian movement. Many persons would 
like to ascribe their success to their religious enthusiasm, lacking 
in the adherents of modern Utopias; no communism without re- 
ligion. But the same religious enthusiasm that had inspired the 
monks in the monasteries had also inspired the Christians of the 
large cities in the first centuries, and yet their communistic experi- 
ments had been neither thorough nor of long duration. 

The cause of success in the one case and failure in the other 
is not to be found in religion, but in their material circumstances. 

As contrasted with the communistic experiments of the primitive 
Christianity of the large cities, the monasteries, as well as the 
communistic colonies in the wilderness, have the advantage that 
agriculture requires a combination of the farm and the family, 
and large-scale agriculture had not only become possible, but had 
already attained a high stage of development in the “otkos 
system” of the large landed proprietors. This large-scale opera- 
tion of the oikos system had, however, been based on slavery. 
Slavery set the limits for its productivity and for its existence too. 
The cessation of the supply of slaves caused the large farms of 
the large landowners to disappear. The monasteries took them 
up again and continued them; in fact, could develop them to a 


452 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


higher point, as the monasteries replaced slave labor by that of 
their own free members. In view of the general disintegration 
of society, the monasteries finally became the only places in the 
decaying empire in which the last remnants of ancient technology 
were preserved through the storms of the migration period and 
even perfected in many points. 

Aside from the influences of the Orient, particularly of the 
Arabs, the monasteries were the points from which civilization 
in Europe again started to grow during the Middle Ages. 

The codperative mode of production of the monastery was ex- 
cellently adapted to the conditions of rural production toward the 
end of the ancient period and in the early Middle Ages; this 
explains its success. In the cities, on the other hand, the con- 
ditions of production were opposed to codperative labor, and com- 
munism could exist only in the form of a mere communism of 
consumption, but it is the mode of production, not the mode of 
distribution or consumption, which determines in the last analysis 
the character of social relations. It was only in the country, in 
the monasteries, that the community of consumption originally 
desired by Christianity obtained a permanent basis in the com- 
munity of production. On this basis, the brotherhoods of the 
Essenes had flourished for several centuries, being finally de- 
stroyed by the sudden annihilation of the Jewish community, and 
not as a result of internal causes. It is on a community of pro- 
duction that the great structure of the Christian monastery arose, 
enduring to the present day. 

But why have the colonies of modern Utopian communism 
been failures? ‘Their basis was not unlike that of monastic com- 
munism, but the mode of production has completely changed 
since then. In place of the isolated single industries of antiquity, 
developing an individualism in labor, and rendering the codpera- 
tion of urban workers very difficult, inspiring them with an 
anarchistic attitude toward production, we now find immense 
plants in urban industry in which each worker constitutes only 
a cog operating together with countless other cogs. The habits 
of work in cooperation, of discipline in labor, of a subordination 
of the individual to the requirements of the whole, in the modern 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 453 


instance replaces the anarchistic attitude of the individual 
worker. But only in production; consumption is a different 
matter. — 

The conditions of life were formerly so simple and uniform 
for the mass of the population, that there resulted a uniformity 
of consumption and of needs, making a permanent community 
of consumption by no means intolerable. 

The modern mode of production, which throws all classes and 
nations together, gathers all the products of the entire world 
into the great commercial centers, produces new products unceas- 
ingly, tirelessly creating not only new means of satisfying needs, 
but also creating the needs, thus establishes in the mass of the 
population a great variety of personal inclinations and desires, 
an “individualism” that could formerly be found only in the 
wealthy and aristocratic classes. In other words, many modes of 
consumption, taking the word in the broadest sense of “enjoying”’ 
material things. The crudest, most material means of consump- 
tion, foods, beverages, clothing, are of course, in many instances, 
subject to standardization in the modern mode of production. 
But it is of the essence of this mode of production not to limit 
even the consumption of the masses to such substances, but to 
create among the workers also a corresponding demand for more 
articles of culture, educational, artistic, sporting, and other 
articles, these needs differentiating themselves more and more 
and finding varying expression in each individual. Thus the 
individualism of enjoyment, formerly the privilege of the wealthy 
and cultured, is spread among the working classes also, first in 
the large cities, thence gradually permeating the remainder of the 
population. Although the modern worker is obliged to make 
great concessions to discipline in his codperation with his fellow 
workers, and recognizes such concessions as necessary, he never- 
theless emphatically resists all attempts to govern his consump- 
tion, his enjoyment. In this field he is becoming more and more 
an individualist, or if you like, anarchistic. The reader will 
now understand how the modern city proletarian must feel in a 
small communistic colony in the wilderness, which cannot be more 
than a large agricultural establishment with subsidiary industrial 


454 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


operations. As we have already stated, industry and the house- 
hold have always been related in this branch of production. This 
was an advantage for Christian communism, which began with a 
community of consumption. In the monastic institutions in the 
provinces, this communism was therefore obliged to unite with a 
communism of production, which gave it great power of resistance - 
and development. 

Modern Utopian communism, beginning with a community in 
production, and finding a very solid basis in this community, was 
forced, on the other hand, by the close relation between consump- 
tion and production, in its small settlements, to add a communism 
of tonsumption to the communism of production, the former 
affecting the latter as red cloth does a bull, producing eternal 
bickering of the most repulsive sort, on petty provocations. 

Only elements of the population that had remained untouched 
by modern capitalism, unworldly peasants, could still found com- 
munistic colonies in the Nineteenth Century within the area of 
modern civilization. Their religion has no bearing on their suc- 
cess, except to the extent that religious enthusiasm as a social 
phenomenon, not as an individual idiosyncrasy, is now found 
only in the most backward strata of the population. 

Communism of production can be executed in modern large- 
scale industrial populations only at such an advanced stage that 
a very far-reaching individualism of consumption—in the widest 
sense of the word—may be united with it. It was a communism 
of production that met with failure in the non-religious com- 
munistic colonies of the Nineteenth Century; for capitalism has 
been successfully practising such communism for some time. It 
was communism in the standardization of personal consumption, 
so contrary to modern habits, that failed. 

In ancient times, and also in the Middle Ages, there was no 
trace among the masses of the people of an individualization of 
wants. Thus, monastic communism encountered no such obstacle, 
and could flourish the more as its mode of production excelled 
that commonly prevalent, in accordance with its own economic 
superiority. Rufinus (345-410) who founded a monastery himself 
on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, in 377 A.D., maintains 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 455 


that almost as many persons lived in the monasteries in the 
country districts of Egypt as in the cities. After due allowance 
for an exaggerated pious imagination, there is no doubt this state- 
ment was based on a number of monks and nuns that must have 
appeared extraordinary. 

Thus the monastic system gave a new lease of life to the com- 
munistic enthusiasm in Christianity, since the latter here found 
an expression that was not obliged to appear as an heretical 
opposition to the dominant ecclesiastical bureaucracy, but might 
very well come to terms with the latter. 

But this form of Christian communism could also not become 
the universal form of society, but was limited to certain strata. 
Therefore the new communism also necessarily again and again 
turned into its opposite, which was the more likely, the greater 
its economic superiority. The latter factor was most likely to 
transform its participants into an aristocracy, superior to the 
remainder of the population, and finally dominating and exploit- 
ing it. 

The monastic communism could not become the universal form 
of society if only for the reason that its conduct of a common 
household, on which it was based, necessarily rejected marriage, 
as the Essenes had done before, and as the religious communistic 
colonies in North America did later (in the Nineteenth Century). 
The prosperity of the common household required only the re- 
nunciation of individual marriage; a sort of community marriage 
would have been quite compatible with it, as is also shown by a 
number of the colonies referred to. But this relation between 
the sexes too sharply contradicted the general social feeling of 
the later Middle Ages to be generally recognized and publicly 
practiced. In general, this period was characterized by a down- 
in-the-dumps feeling which made abstinence from all enjoyment, 
asceticism, a more natural solution, besides which it surrounded 
with a peculiar halo those who practised such abstinence. But 
the practice of celibacy doomed monasticism in advance to remain 
limited to a minority. This minority might at times increase 
considerably, as the above quoted passage from Rufinus shows, 
but even Rufinus’s obvious exaggeration does not dare represent 


456 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the monastic population as a majority. And the monastic enthu- 
siasm of the Egyptians in Rufinus’s day soon abated. 

As monastic communism became firm and durable, the wealth 
of the monastery necessarily increased. ‘The monastic industries 
soon furnished the best products and the cheapest, since the com- 
mon household rendered the cost of production quite low. Like 
the ozkos system of the great landed proprietors, the monasteries 
produced themselves almost everything they needed in foodstuffs 
and raw materials. The workers showed far more zeal than had 
the slaves of the great landed proprietor, for they were members 
themselves, receiving the entire product of their labor. Besides, 
each monastery included so many workers that it might select 
for each of its industries those workers best fitted for it, thus 
introducing a far-reaching division of labor. Finally, the monas- 
tery, as contrasted with the individual, was eternal. Inventions 
and business secrets which might easily be lost with the death of 
the inventor and his family, became the enterprise of many mem- 
bers in the monastery, being transmitted by them to their suc- 
cessors. Besides, the monastery, being an eternal personage, was 
not beset with the destructive danger of dissipating its patrimony 
by inheritance. Its accumulations of property were never divided 
in the form of bequests. 

Thus the wealth of each monastery grew, also the wealth of 
combinations of monasteries under a single head and under uni- 
form regulations, the so-called orders of monks. But no sooner 
did a monastery become rich and powerful, than the same process 
took place in it that has recurred in many other communistic 
organizations since then, embracing but a portion of society, as 
may still be observed in productive codperative organizations now 
in existence. The owners of the means of production now find it 
easier to have others work for them than to work themselves, if 
they can find the necessary workers: penniless wage laborers, 
slaves, or serfs. 

While the monastic system in its beginnings imparted new life” 
to the communistic enthusiasm in Christianity, it nevertheless 
finally took the same path that the clergy of the Church had taken 


THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION 457 


before it. Like the clergy, it became an organization for exploita- 
tion and domination. 

To be sure, this controlling organization did not always consent 
to be a mere blind tool of the rulers of the Church, the bishops. 
Economically independent of them, rivaling them in wealth, with 
an international organization like theirs, the monasteries were able 
to oppose the bishops when no one else would have dared do so. 

They thus occasionally aided in somewhat attenuating the des- 
potism of the bishops, but even this clemency was destined ullti- 
mately to turn into its opposite. 

After the division of the Church into an Eastern and a Western 
Church, the emperor became the liege-lord of the bishops in the 
former. In the latter there was no state authority that could 
have controlled the entire realm of the Church. Therefore it was 
the Bishop of Rome who first obtained precedence over the other 
bishops in the Western Church, thanks to the importance of his 
diocese. This precedence in the course of centuries developed 
more and more into a domination over the other bishops. As the 
absolute monarchy of modern times developed out of the class 
struggle between the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie, so the 
absolute monarchy of the Pope developed out of the class struggle 
with the aristocracy of bishops and monks, the owners of the 
large monastic industries. With the consolidation of the Papacy, 
the ascending curve of the Church’s development reaches its cul- 
mination. All later evolutions in state and society involve defeats 
for the Church; the development is now against the Church and 
the Church against all development; it becomes an out-and-out 
reactionary, anti-social institution. 

Even after its transformation into the opposite of its early 
stage, after becoming an organization of domination and exploita- 
tion, the Church still succeeded for a time in achieving great 
things. But with the end of the Crusades, the Church had no 
further function to discharge for the human race. Its contribu- 
tion, after it had become the state religion, consisted in rescuing 
and developing the remnants of ancient civilization as it found 
them. But when a new mode of production, far superior to the 
ancient, developed on the basis of the system that had been res- 


458 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


cued and perfected by the Church, when capitalism was the result 
and an all-embracing communism of production arose, the Catholic 
Church could be nothing more than an obstacle to social progress. 
Born from communism, it is now among the bitterest enemies 
of modern communism. 

Will not this communism in turn develop the same dialectic 
process as the Christian communism and also become a new 
mechanism for exploitation and domination? This question is 
the last one requiring our attention. 


VI. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 


Tue famous introduction written by Engels in March, 1895, 
for the new edition of Marx’s Class Struggles in France from 
1848 to 1850 closes with the following words: 

“Now almost sixteen hundred years ago, there was at work 
in the Roman Empire a dangerous revolutionary party. It under- 
mined religion and all the foundations of the State; it denied 
pointblank that the emperor’s will was the highest law; it was 
without a fatherland, international; it spread out over the entire 
realm from Gaul to Asia, and even beyond the borders of the 
Empire. It had long worked underground and in secrecy, but 
had, for some time, felt strong enough to come out openly in the 
light of day. This revolutionary party, known under the name 
of Christians, also had a strong representation in the army; 
entire legions were composed of Christians. When they were 
commanded to attend the sacrificial ceremonies of the Pagan 
established church, there to serve as a guard of honor, the revolu- 
tionary soldiers went so far in their insolence as to fasten special 
symbols—crosses—on their helmets. The customary disciplinary 
barrack measures of their officers proved fruitless. The emperor, 
Diocletian, could no longer quietly look on and see how order, 
obedience and discipline were undermined in his army. He pro- 
mulgated an anti-Socialist—beg pardon—an anti-Christian law. 
The meetings of the revolutionaries were prohibited, their meet- 
ing places were closed or even demolished, the Christian symbols, 
crosses, etc., were forbidden as in Saxony they forbid red pocket 
handkerchiefs. The Christians were declared unfit to hold office 
in the State, they could not even become corporals. Inasmuch 
as at that time they did not have judges well drilled as to the 
‘reputation of a person’, such as Herr Koller’s anti-Socialist law 
presupposes, the Christians were simply forbidden to seek their 


rights in a court of law. But this exceptional law, too, remained 
459 


460 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


ineffective. In defiance, the Christians tore it from the walls, yea, 
it is said that at Nicomedia they fired the emperor’s palace over 
his head. Then the latter revenged himself by means of a great 
persecution of Christians in 303 A.D. This was the last perse- 
cution of its kind. It was so effective that, seventeen years later, 
the army was composed largely of Christians, and that the next 
autocratic ruler of the entire Roman Empire, Constantine, called 
‘the Great’ by the clericals, proclaimed Christianity as the re- 
ligion of the State.” * 

He who knows his Engels and compares these last lines of 
Engels’s “political testament” with the views Engels expressed 
throughout his life, cannot have any doubts as to the intentions 
behind this humorous comparison. Engels wanted to point out 
the irresistible and elemental nature of the progress of our move- 
ment, which he said owed its inevitability particularly to the in- 
crease of its adherents in the army, so that it would soon be able 
to force even the most powerful autocrat to yield. 

This narration is interesting chiefly as an expression of the 
healthy optimism which Engels retained up to his death. 

But the passage also has been interpreted differently, since it 
is preceded by statements to the effect that the party at present 
flourishes best when pursuing legal methods. Certain persons 
have maintained that Engels in his “political testament” denies 
his entire life-work and finally represents the revolutionary stand- 
point, which he has defended for two generations, as an error. 
These persons inferred that Engels had now recognized Marx’s 
doctrine—to the effect that force is the midwife of every new 
form of society—as no longer tenable. In drawing a comparison 
between Christianity and Socialism, interpreters of this stamp 
did not place the emphasis on the irresistible and elemental nature 
of the advance, but on Constantine’s voluntary proclamation of 
Christianity as the state religion; the latter was brought to victory 
without any violent convulsions in the state, by peaceful means 
alone, through the friendly assistance of the government. 

These persons imagine that Socialism will also conquer thus. 


1 Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850, with an Introduction by 
Frederick Engels, translated by Henry Kuhn, New York: 1924, pp. 29, 30. 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 461 


Immediately after the death of Engels this hope indeed seemed 
about to be fulfilled, as M. Waldeck-Rousseau came out as a new 
Constantine in France and appointed a Bishop of the new Chris- 
tians, M. Millerand, as his Minister. 

He who knows Engels and judges him without bias, will know 
that it never even entered Engels’s mind to abjure his revolution- 
ary ideas, that the final passage of his introduction cannot there- 
fore be interpreted in the sense indicated above. But it must be 
admitted that the passage is not very clear. Persons who do not 
know Engels, who imagine that he was assailed immediately 
before his death by sudden doubts as to the utility of his entire 
life-work, may interpret this passage, standing alone, as indicat- 
ing that Christianity’s path to victory is a pattern for the journey 
that Socialism has still to make. 

If this had really been Engels’s opinion, no worse judgment 
could have been spoken on Socialism; it would have been equiva- 
lent to a prophecy not of approaching triumph, but of a complete 
defeat of the great goal proposed by Socialism. 

It is characteristic that the persons who thus utilize this pas- 
sage overlook all the great and profound elements in Engels, but 
greet with enthusiasm such sentences as—if they really contained 
what is alleged to be in them—would be entirely erroneous. 

We have seen that Christianity did not attain victory until it 
had been transformed into the precise opposite of its original 
character; that the victory of Christianity was not the victory of 
the proletariat, but of the clergy which was exploiting and domi- 
nating the proletariat; that Christianity was not victorious as a 
subversive force, but as a conservative force, as a new prop of 
suppression and exploitation; that it not only did not eliminate 
the imperial power, slavery, the poverty of the masses, and the 
concentration of wealth in a few hands, but perpetuated these 
conditions. The Christian organization, the Church, attained 
victory by surrendering its original aims and defending their 
opposite. 

Indeed, if the victory of Socialism is to be achieved in the 
same way as that of Christianity, this would be a good reason 
for renouncing, not revolution, but the Social-Democracy; no 


462 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


severer accusation could be raised against the Social-Democracy, 
from the proletarian standpoint, and the attacks made by the 
anarchists against the Social-Democracy would be only too well 
justified. Indeed, the attempt by bourgeois and socialistic ele- 
ments at a socialistic ministerial function in France, which aimed 
to imitate the Christian method of rendering Christianity a state 
institution in the old days—and applied, strangely enough, in this 
instance, to combat the State Church—has had no other effect 
than to strengthen the semi-anarchistic, anti-socialistic syndi- 
calism. 

But fortunately the parallel between Christianity and Socialism 
is completely out of place in this connection. Christianity, to be 
sure, is in its origin a movement of the poor, like Socialism, and 
both therefore have many elements in common, as we have had 
occasion to point out. 

Engels also referred to this similarity in an article entitled 
“On the History of Primitive Christianity,” in Die Neue Zeit,’ 
written shortly before his death, and indicating how profoundly 
Engels was interested in this subject at that time, how natural it 
therefore was for him to write the parallel found in his intro- 
duction to the Class Struggles in France. This article says: 

“The history of primitive Christianity presents remarkable 
coincidences with the modern workers’ movement. Like the 
latter, Christianity was originally a movement of the oppressed; 
it first appeared as a religion of slaves and freedmen, of the poor, 
the outcasts, of the peoples subjected or dispersed by Rome. 
Both Christianity and Socialism preach an approaching redemp- 
tion from servitude and misery; Christianity assigns this redemp- 
tion to a future life in Heaven after death; Socialism would 
attain it in this world by a transformation of society. Both are 
hunted and persecuted, their adherents outlawed, subjected to 
special legislation, represented, in the one case, as enemies of the 
human race, in the other, as enemies of the nation, religion, the 
family, of the social order. And in spite of all persecutions, in 
some cases even aided to victory by such persecutions, both 


2Vol. xiii, No. 1, p. 4ff., September, 1894 (Zur Geschichte des Urchristen- 
tums). 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 463 


advance irresistibly. Three centuries after its beginning, Chris- 
tianity is the recognized state religion of the Roman Empire, and 
in barely sixty years Socialism has conquered a place that renders 
its victory absolutely certain.” 

This parallel is correct on the whole, with a few limitations of 
course; Christianity can hardly be called a religion of the slaves; 
it did nothing for them. On the other hand, the liberation from 
misery proclaimed by Christianity was at first quite material, to 
be realized on- this earth, not in Heaven. This latter circum- 
stance, however, increases the similarity with the modern workers’ 
movement. Engels continues: 

“The parallel between these two historical phenomena becomes 
apparent even in the Middle Ages, in the first insurrections of 
oppressed peasants, and particularly of urban plebeians. .. . 
The communists of the French Revolution, as well as Weitling 
and his adherents, make references to primitive Christianity long 
before Ernest Renan said: ‘If you would form an idea of the first 
Christian congregations drop in at the local section of the Inter- 
national Workers’ Association.’ 

“The French litterateur who wrote the ecclesiastical novel Les 
Origines du Christianisme, a plagiarism of German Bible criti- 
cism unparalleled for its audacity—was himself not aware how 
much truth these words contained. I should like to see any old 
‘international’ who would read, let us say, the so-called Second 
Epistle to the Corinthians, without feeling the opening of old 
wounds at least in a certain sense.” 

Engels then goes into greater detail in comparing primitive 
Christianity and the International, but he does not trace the later 
development of either Christianity or the workers’ movement. 
The dialectic collapse of the former does not receive his attention, 
and yet, if Engels had pursued this subject, he would have dis- 
covered traces of similar transformations in the modern workers’ 
movement. Like Christianity, this movement is obliged to create 
permanent organs in the course of its growth, a sort of profes- 
sional bureaucracy in the party, as well as in the unions, without 
which it cannot function, which are a necessity for it, which must 
continue to grow, and obtain more and more important duties. 


464 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


This bureaucracy—which must be taken in the broad sense as 
including not only the administrative officials, but also editors 
and parliamentary delegates—will not this bureaucracy in the 
course of things become a new aristocracy, like the clergy headed 
by the bishop? Will it not become an aristocracy dominating 
and exploiting the working masses and finally attaining the power 
to deal with the state authorities on equal terms, thus being 
tempted not to overthrow them but join them? 

This final outcome would be certain if the parallel were perfect. 
But fortunately this is not the case. In spite of the numerous 
similarities between Christianity and the modern workers’ move- 
ment, there are also fundamental differences. 

Particularly, the proletariat today is quite different from the 
proletariat of early Christianity. The traditional view of a free 
proletariat consisting of beggars only is probably exaggerated; 
the slaves were not the only workers. But it is true that slave 
labor also corrupted the free working proletarians, most of whom 
worked in their own homes. A laboring proletarian’s ideal then 
strove, as did that of the beggar, to realize an existence without 
labor at the expense of the rich, who were expected to squeeze 
the necessary quantity of products out of the slaves. 

Furthermore, Christianity in the first three centuries was ex- 
clusively an urban movement, but the city proletarians at that 
time had but little significance in the composition of society, whose 
productive basis was almost entirely that of antiquity, combined 
with quite important industrial operations. 

As a result of all this, the chief bearers of the Christian move- 
ment, the free urban proletarians, workers and idlers, did not 
feel that society was living on them; they all strove to live on 
society without giving any return. Work played no part in their 
vision of the future state. 

It was therefore of course natural that in spite of all the class 
hatred against the rich, the effort to gain their favor and their 
generosity becomes apparent again and again, and the inclination 
of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy to favor the rich members in 
the mass of the congregation encountered as little resistance as 
did the arrogance of this bureaucracy itself. 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 465 


The economic and moral decay of the proletariat in the Roman 
Empire was further increased by the general decline of all society, 
which was becoming poorer and more desperate, while its pro- 
ductive forces were declining more and more. Thus hopelessness 
and despair seized all classes, crippled their initiative, caused all 
to expect salvation only at the hands of extraordinary and super- 
natural powers, made them helpless victims of any clever im- 
postor, or of any energetic, self-confident adventurer, caused them 
to relinquish as hopeless any independent resistance to any of the 
dominant powers. 

How different is the modern proletariat! It is a proletariat of 
labor, and it knows that all society rests upon its shoulders. And 
the capitalistic mode of production is shifting the center of gravity 
in production more and more from the provinces to the industrial 
centers, in which mental and political life are most active. The 
workers of these centers, the most energetic and intelligent of all, 
now become the elements controlling the destinies of society. 

Simultaneously, the dominant mode of production enhances the 
productive forces enormously and thus increases the claims made 
on society by the workers, also increasing their power to put 
through these claims. Hopefulness, confidence, self-conscious- 
ness, inspire them, as they once inspired the rising bourgeoisie, 
giving it the power to break the chains of the feudal, ecclesiastical, 
bureaucratic dgmination and exploitation, and drawing the neces- 
sary strength from the great growth of capital. 

The origin of Christianity coincides with a collapse of democ- 
racy. The three centuries of its development previous to its 
recognition are characterized by a constant decline of all rem- 
nants of autonomy, and also by a progressive disintegration of 
the productive forces. 

The modern workers’ movement originates in an immense vic- 
tory of democracy, namely, the great French Revolution. The 
century that has elapsed since then, with all its changes and 
fluctuations, nevertheless presents a steady advance of democracy, 
a veritably fabulous increase in the productive forces, and not 
only a greater expansion, but also a greater independence and 
clarity on the part of the proletariat. 


466 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


One has only to examine this contrast to become aware that the 
development of Socialism cannot possibly deviate from its course 
as did that of Christianity; we need not fear that it will develop 
a new Class of rulers and exploiters from its ranks, sharing their 
booty with the old tyrants. 

While the fighting ability and the fighting spirit of the prole- 
tariat progressively decreased in the Roman Empire, these quali- 
ties are being strengthened in modern society; the class oppositions 
are becoming perceptibly more acute, and this alone must frustrate 
all attempts to induce the proletariat to relinquish its struggle 
because its champions have been favored. Any such attempts 
have hitherto led to the isolation of the person making them, who 
has been deserted by the proletariat in spite of his former services 
to them. But not only the proletariat and the political and social 
environment in which it moves are entirely different today from 
the conditions of the primitive Christian era; present-day com- 
munism and the conditions of its realization are quite different 
from the conditions of ancient communism. 

The struggle for communism, the need for communism, today 
originate from the same source, namely poverty, and so long as 
Socialism is only a Socialism of the feelings, only an expression 
of this want, it will occasionally express itself even in the modern 
workers’ movement in tendencies resembling those of the time of 
primitive Christianity. The slightest understanding of the 
economic conditions of present-day communism will at once rec- 
ognize how different it is from the primitive Christian communism. 

The concentration of wealth in a few hands, which in the 
Roman Empire proceeded hand in hand with a constant decrease 
in the productive forces—for which decrease it was partly respon- 
sible—this same concentration has today become the basis for an 
enormous increase in productive forces. While the distribution 
of wealth then did not injure the productivity of society in the 
slightest degree, but rather favored it, it would be equivalent to 
a complete crippling of production today. | Modern communism 
can no longer think of an equal distribution of wealth; its object 
is rather to secure the greatest possible increase in the productiv- 
ity of labor and a more equitable distribution of the annual prod- 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 467 


ucts of labor by pushing the concentration of wealth to the high- 
est point, transforming it from the private monopoly of a few 
capitalist groups into a state monopoly. 

But modern communism, if it would satisfy the needs of the 
new man created by modern methods of production, must also 
fully preserve individualism of consumption. This individualism 
does not involve an isolation of individuals from each other when 
consuming; it may even take the form of a social consumption, 
of social activity; the individualism of enjoyment is not equivalent 
to an abolition of large enterprises in the production of articles 
of consumption, nor to a displacement of the machine by hand 
labor, as many esthetic Socialists may dream. But the individual- 
ism of consumption requires liberty in the choice of enjoyments, 
also liberty in the choice of the society in which the consumer 
consumes. 

But the mass of the urban population in primitive Christian 
days knew no forms of social production; large enterprises with 
free workers can hardly be said to have existed in urban industry. 
But they are well acquainted with social forms of consumption, 
particulary common meals, often provided by the congregation 
or the state. 

Thus the primitive Christian communism was a communism of 
distribution of wealth and standardization of consumption; mod- 
ern communism means concentration of wealth and concentration 
of production. 

The primitive Christian communism did not need to be ex- 
tended over all of society in order to be brought about. Its exe- 
cution could begin within a limited area, in fact, it might, within 
those limits, assume permanent forms; indeed, the latter were 
of a nature that precluded their becoming a universal form of 
society. 

Therefore primitive Christian communism necessarily became 
a new form of aristocracy, and it was obliged to accomplish this 
inner dialectic even within society as it then was. It could not 
abolish classes, but only add a new form of domination to society. 

But modern communism, in view of the immense expansion of 
the means of production, the social character of the mode of 


468 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


production, the far-reaching concentration of the most important 
objects of wealth, has not the slightest chance of being brought 
about on any smaller scale than that of society as a whole. All 
attempts to realize communism in the petty establishments of 
socialistic colonies or productive codperatives within society as 
it is, have been failures. Communism may not be produced by 
the formation of little organizations within capitalist society, 
which would gradually absorb that society as they expand, but 
only by the attainment of a power sufficient to control and trans- 
form the whole of social life. This power is the state power. The 
conquest of political power by the proletariat is the first condi- 
tion of the realization of modern communism. 

Until the proletariat reaches this stage, there can be no thought 
of socialistic production, or of the latter’s effecting contradictions 
in its development that will transform sense into nonsense and 
benefactions into torments.* But even after the modern proletariat 
has conquered the political power, social production will not come 
into being at once as a finished whole, but economic development 
will suddenly take a new turn, no longer in the direction of an 
accentuation of capitalism but toward the development of a social 
production. When will the latter have advanced to the point 
where contradictions and abuses will appear in it, destined to 
develop the new society in another direction now unknown and 
absolutely obscure? This condition cannot be outlined at present 
and need not be dwelt on here. 

As far as we can trace the modern socialistic movement, it is 
impossible for it to produce phenomena that will show any simi- 
larity with those of Christianity as a state religion. But it is also 
true that the manner in which Christianity attained its victory 
cannot in any way serve as a pattern for the modern movement of 
proletarian ambitions. 

The victory of the leaders of the proletariat will surely not be 
as easy as that of the good bishops of the Fourth Century. 

But we may maintain not only that Socialism will not develop 


8 Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohltat Plage; 
Weh dir, dass du ein Enkel bist !—Goethe’s Faust. 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 469 


any internal contradictions in the period preceding this victory, 
that will be comparable with those attending the last phases of 
Christianity, but also that no such contradictions will materialize 
in the period in which the predictable rag a of this victory 
are developed. 

For capitalism has developed the conditions for placing society 
on an entirely new basis, completely different from all of the bases 
on which society has stood since class distinctions first arose. 
While no new revolutionary class or party—even those that went 
much further than Christianity in the form recognized by Con- 
stantine, even when they actually would abolish existing class 
distinctions—has ever been able to abolish all classes, but has 
always substituted new class distinctions for the old ones, we now 
have the material conditions for an elimination of all class dis- 
tinctions. ‘The modern proletariat is moved by its class interest 
to utilize these conditions in the direction of this abolition, for it 
is now the lowest class, while in the days of Christianity the slaves 
were lower than the proletariat. 

Class differences and class oppositions ought by no means to 
be confused with the distinctions brought about between the 
various callings, by a division of labor. The contrast between 
classes is the result of three causes: private property in the means 
of production, in the manipulation of weapons, in science. Cer- 
tain technical and social conditions produce the differentiation 
between those who possess the means of production and those who 
do not; later, they produce the distinction between those who are 
trained in the use of arms and those who are defenseless; finally 
comes the distinction between those well versed in science and 
those who are ignorant. 

The capitalistic mode of production creates the necessary con- 
ditions for abolishing all these oppositions. It not only works 
toward an abolition of private property in the means of produc- 
tion, but by its wealth of productive forces it also abolishes the 
necessity of limiting military training and knowledge to certain 
strata. This necessity had been created as soon as military train- 
ing and science had attaind a rather high stage, enabling those 


470 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


who had free time and material means exceeding the needs of 
life, to acquire weapons and knowledge and to apply both suc- 
cessfully. 

While the productivity of labor remained small and yielded 
but a slight surplus, not everyone was able to gain sufficient 
time and means to keep abreast of the military knowledge 
or the general science of his day. In fact, the surplus of 
many individuals was required to enable a single individual 
to make a perfect performance in the military or learned 
field. 

This could not be obtained except by the exploitation of many 
by a few. The increased intelligence and military ability of the 
few enabled them to oppress and exploit the defenseless ignorant 
mass. On the other hand, precisely the oppression and exploita- 
tion of the mass became the means of increasing the military skill 
and the knowledge of the ruling classes. 

Nations that were able to remain free from exploitation and 
oppression remained ignorant and often defenseless, as opposed 
to better armed and better informed neighbors. In the struggle 
for existence, the nations of exploiters and oppressors therefore 
defeated those who retained their aboriginal communism and their 
aboriginal democracy. 

The capitalistic mode of production has so infinitely perfected 
the productivity of labor, that this cause for class differences no 
longer exists. The latter are no longer maintained as a social 
necessity, but merely as a result of a traditional alignment of 
forces, with the result that they will cease when this alignment 
is no longer effective. 

The capitalistic mode of production itself, owing to the great 
surpluses created by it, has enabled the various nations to resort 
to a universal military service, thus eliminating the aristocracy 
of warriors. But capitalism is itself bringing all the nations of 
the world market into such close and permanent relations with 
each other that world peace becomes more and more an urgent 
necessity, war of any kind a piece of ruthless folly. If the capi- 
talistic mode of production and the economic hostility between 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 471 


the various nations can be overcome, the state of eternal peace 
now desired by the great masses of humanity will become a 
reality. The universal peace realized by imperial despotism 
for the nations around the Mediterranean in the Second Cen- 
tury of the Christian era—the only advantage which that 
despotism conferred on these nations—will be realized in 
the Twentieth Century for the nations of the world by Social- 
ism. 

The entire basis of the opposition between the classes of war- 
riors and non-warriors will then disappear. 

But the bases of the contrast between educated and uneducated 
will also disappear. Only, now, the capitalistic mode of produc- 
tion has immensely cheapened the tools of knowledge by cheap 
printing, making them accessible to the masses. Simultaneously 
it produces an increasing demand for intellectuals, which it trains 
in its schools in great numbers, pushing them back into the pro- 
letariat, however, when they become more numerous. Capitalism 
has thus created the technical possibility for an immense shorten- 
ing of the working day, and a number of classes of workers have 
already gained certain advantages in this direction, with more 
time for educational activities. 

With the victory of the proletariat these germs will at once be 
fully developed, making a splendid reality of the possibilities of 
a general education of the masses that are afforded by the capital- 
istic mode of production. 

The period of the rise of Christianity is a period of the saddest 
intellectual decline, of the flourishing of an absurd ignorance, of 
the most stupid superstition; the period of the rise of Socialism 
is a period of the most striking progress in the natural sciences 
and a speedy acquisition of knowledge by the classes under the 
influence of the Social-Democracy. 

The class opposition arising from military training has already 
lost its basis; the class contrast arising from private property in 
the means of production will also lose its basis as soon as the 
political rule of the proletariat produces its effects, and the con- 
sequences of this rule will soon become evident in a decrease in 


472 FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 


the distinction between educated and uneducated, which may dis- 
appear within a single generation. 

The last causes for class distinctions and class oppositions will 
then have ceased. 

Socialism must therefore not only attain power by entirely dif- 
ferent means than did Christianity, but it must produce entirely 
different effects. It must forever eliminate all class rule. 


INDEX 









: 7 i iv 
aE NR 


i) Wen i as 
’ Deus!) 
AS OR 





INDEX 


A 


Acts of the Apostles, 341, 343, 344 

Acts of the Apostle Paul, 137, 350, 351, 
377, 382, 384-387, 393, 394 

“Eneid (Virgil), 127 

Africa, 90, see also Carthage, Egypt, 
Alexandria, Memphis 

Agrippa, King of Judea, 248, 249, 402 

Agrippina, Roman empress, 122 

Albinus, Roman governor, 303, 304 

Alexander of Abonuteichos, 141, 142 

Alexander Severus, Roman emperor, 
325 

Alexander the Great, 142, 143, 242, 246, 
250, 251, 274 

Alexandria, Egypt, 124, 247, 249, 250, 
251, 288, 207, 315, 316 

Alkinoos, king in the Odyssey, 52 

Allegories of the Law (Philo), 121 

Amelius, 141 

Amos, Hebrew prophet, 219 

Ananias, deceiver, 331, 332, 343 

Angels, 179-181 

Anthony, Saint, 451 

Antinoos, Greek youth, 127, 128 

Antioch, ancient capital, 249, 288, 209 

Anti-Semitism, 390, 391 

Antonius, triumvir, 70, 113, 124 

Antwerp, Belgium, 98, 199 

Anubis, Egyptian god, 132 

Apion of Alexandria, Jew-baiter, 141, 
268, 260, 276, 315 

Apis, Egyptian god, 175 

Apollo, Greek god, 126 

Apollonius of Tyana, 135, 136, 165, 175 

Appian, historian, 54, 112, 113 

Arabia, 90, 192, 194-197 

Aramaic language, 258, see also Kad- 
dish prayer 

Areus, Alexandrian Stoic, 124 

Aristophanes, 153, 154 

Arnuphis, Egyptian magician, 138 

Artaxerxes, Persian king, 279, 280, 287 

Artisans in ancient times, 47-50, 67 

Asiani company, bankers, 106 

Asideans, 282, see also Revelation 


475 


Asklepiades of Mendes, 131 

Assembly of citizens, Roman, 93-95, 97 

Assyria, 198, 213, 216, 220, 221, 222 

Astronomy, 8, 129, see also Sciences 

Atia, mother of Augustus, 131, 132 

Augustine, Saint, 331 

Augustus, Roman emperor, 81, 85, 109, 
113, 124, 126-128, 131, 132, 150, 163, 
164, 252, 253, 285, 361 


B 


Baal, Phoenician god, 200 

Babylon, city, 98, 192, 198, 200, 213, 
225, 230, 231, 234, 241, 242, 246, 288, 
289 

Babylonian Exile, 187, 235, 237-2309, 
241, 242 

Bagaudi, insurrections of the, 83 

Banking, in ancient times, 105, 106, see 
also Bishop, Hatch 

Baptism, 264 

Barabbas, murderer, 400, 403 

Barnabas, 343, 385 

Bauer, Bruno, 7, 32, 33, 40, 120, 125, 
365, 385, 307 

Bebel, August, 367 

Bedouin tribes, 196, 210, 213, 208 

Berlin, Germany, 87, 367, 399 

Bethlehem, 361 

Bishop, rise of the, 433-449 

Breakfasts, Caesar’s public, 109 

Brutus, see Junius Brutus 

Buddha, 176 


© 


Cabetists, experiments of, 451 

Caesar, Julius, 80, 102, 103, 105, 106, 
109, III-113, 127, 158, 168, 249-252, 
318, 319, 381 

Caius Cassius, 160 

Caligula, Roman emperor, 81, 125, 128, 
267-270 

Callistus, Roman Christian, 157, 166, 
167, 352, 413 

Canaan, 210, 211, 212-217, 233 

Canus Julius, 125 


476 


Capitalism, ancient, 107-108, see also 
Salvioli 

Capitalism, modern, 107, see also 
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rob- 
ert Pohlmann 

Cappadocia, 105 

Caracalla, Roman emperor, 81, 163, 165 

Carpocrates, 352, 353 

Carthage, 57, 100 

Cassius Dio, see Dio Cassius 

Catholic Church, origin of, 444, 445 

Cattle-breeding, 88, see also Bedouin 
tribes, Arabia 

Celsus, 428, 429 

Census, in Judea, 361, 362, see also 
David Friedrich Strauss 

Charisius, Roman jurist, 436 

Charles X, performs miracles, 133 

Christian Origins (Pfleiderer), 121 

Christus und die Cdsaren (Bruno 
Bauer), 125 

Chrysostom, Saint John, 331-334, 346 

Church, Christian, its present power, 21 

Circumcelliones, dissenting Christians, 
449 

Circumcision, 262, 263, 265 

Citizenship, bestowal of Roman, 93-97 

City, growth of, in Roman Empire, 
93-97 

Clan, its organization, 87, 88 

Class Struggles in France 
Marx), 450, 460, 462 

Claudius, Roman emperor, 153, 157, 
249, 270 

Clergy, origin of word, 444 

Clientes, Roman social class, 96, 102 

Coloni, Roman peasant class, 76, 77, 
83, 84 

Colonus, see Coloni 

Colossians, Epistle to, 412 

Commodus, Roman emperor, 157, 165, 
166, 325, 370 

Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx), 
442 

Constantine Donation, 
forgery, 147 

Constantine, Roman emperor, 167, 448, 
460 

Constantinople, 333 

Corinthians, 424 

Cotta Messalinus, 340 

Crassus, Marcus, Roman triumir, 112, 
154, 276 


(Karl 


ecclesiastical 


INDEX 


Crusades, 457 
Cynics, school of, 124 


D 


Damascus, 262, 263, 288, 372 

Deacons, origin of, 435, 436, 437 

Dead Sea, 410 

Death, fear of, 118 

Decimus Labirius, Roman actor, 109 

Decius Mundus, Roman gallant, 132,133 

Declaration of Independence, U. S.A., 
414 

Decretals (Isidor), 147 

Demetrius, Cynic, 125 

Demetrius Poliorketes, 195 

Diaspora, the Jewish, 212, 242-253, 328 

Didache, see Doctrine of the Twelve 
Apostles 

Dikzarchia, 136, 249, 253 

Dio Cassius, 27, 122, 123, 142 

Dio Chrysostom, 77-79 

Diocletian, Roman emperor, 84, 136, 
459 

Diodorus Siculus, 55, 56, 195 

Diogenes, Cynic, 124, 427 

Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, 348, 
349, 429-431 

Domitian, Roman Emperor, 80, 136 

Donatists, dissenting Christians, 449 

Drusus, Livia’s son, 124 


E 


Eclipses, in ancient history, 23 

Edomites, 192, 195 

Egypt, 90, IOI, 192, 197, 201, 200, 210, 
211-214, 232, 244-246, 271, 272, 316, 
317 

Elba, iron from, 90 

Eleazar, bandit chieftain, 402 

Engels, Friedrich, 442, 459-463 

England, hegemony in Europe, I91, see 
also Ireland 

Ephesus, 136, 253 

Epicurus, 117, 123 

Epiphanes, 352 

Essenes, 301, 307-320, 337, 338, 345, 
368, 360 

Ethics, origin of, 116, 117, 130 

Etruscan cities, Roman conquest of, 
98, 99 

Euemerus, impostor, 143 

Eumeus, the “divine swineherd”, 52 

Eunuchs, a power in Rome, 153, 293 


INDEX 


Euphrates, valley of, 192 
Eusebius of Cexsarea, 136 

Exile, see Babylonian Exile 
Ezekiel, Hebrew prophet, 198, 231 


F 


Farming out taxes, see Tax-farming 

Father Confessor, origin of, 125 

Felix, Procurator, 302, 303, 367, 407 

Fiscus, Roman Treasury, 83 

Flaccus, 274 

Flavius Clemens, Consul, 325 

Forerunners of Socialism (Karl Kaut- 
sky), 7 

Fourierists, experiments of, 451 

Freedmen, former Roman slaves, 69, 
156-158 

Friedlander, Ludwig, historian, 
156-158, 340 

Fulvia, Roman lady, 270, 271 


G 


Galilean, Jesus a, 395, 396 

Gallienus, Roman emperor, 139 

Gautama Buddha, see Buddha 

Gaza, 197 

Gessius Florus, 301, 304, 305 

Gibbon, Edward, 22, 23, 82, 83, 138, 130 

Gnostics, 352, 353 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 35, 36, 
468 

Gold, production in ancient times, 80, 
see also Julius Caesar 

Goths, ancient Germanic tribe, 82, 83, 
84 

Gracchus, Caius, proletarian leader, 
154, 369 

Greece, 90, 101, 198, 207, 208, 209, 245 

Greek language, importance of, 87, 162, 
257, 258 


142, 


H 


Hadrian, Roman emperor, 127, 128, 151 
Hamburg, Germany, 98 | 
Harnack, Adolf, 35, 348, 349, 421, 428, 


420 

Hatch, Edwin, English Church histo- 
rian, 436, 437 

Heaven, 110, 463, et passim 

Hebrew language, 257, 258 

Hebrews, see Jews 

Heeren, Arnold H. L., 194-196 

Hell, 119 


477 


Helvidius, 125 

Helvius Basila, preetor, 151 

Heraclitus, Greek philosopher, 121 

Herennius, pupil of Plotinus, 141 

Heresies, early, 443 

Herod, 284, 285, 203, 298, 299 

Herodotus, Greek historian, 175, 198 

Hertzberg, Gustav Friedrich, historian, 
127, 128, 174 

Hieroclis, 136 

History, value of the study of, 15 

Hyksos, in Egypt, 211-213, 217, 232 


I 

Iberia, see Spain 

Individualism, 114, 115 

Interest rates high in ancient Rome, 
105-106 

Ireland, conditions in modern, 79 

Isaiah, Hebrew prophet, 218, 219, 237- 
238 

Isidor’s Decretals, 147 

Isis, Egyptian goddess, 132, 133, 174 

Israelites, 197, 198, 199-203, 210, 211, 
213, 231, 240, 201 

Italy, 81, see also Rome, Samnites, 
Volscians, Etruscan Cities, Sicily 


J 


Jairus’s daughter, 31 

James, Epistle of Saint, 328, 320 

Jehovah, see Yahveh 

Jentsch, Karl, 52 

Joint-stock companies, ancient origin 
of, 106 

Jeremiah, Hebrew prophet, 219, 231 

Jerome, Saint, 325, 331 

Jerusalem, 113, 212, 214, 223-226, 234, 
235-237, 247-249, 270, 271, 276, 277, 
279, 289, 290, 203, 296, 297, 303, 320, 
335, 345, 355, 369, 382, et passim 

Jews, the, 175, 182-320, 387, 394 

John, Gospel of Saint, 358, 359, 377, 404 

Joseph, 361-363 

Josephus, Flavius, 23-25, 133, 253, 270, 
271, 273, 276, 277, 284, 285, 286, 290, 
300-305, 307-313, 320, 367 

Judah, see Judea 

Judas Iscariot, 334, 367, 368 

Judea, 198, 216, 225, 234, 279, 285, 
305, 361 

Junius Brutus, usurer, 105 


478 


Justin the Martyr, 436 
Juvenal, Roman satirist, 266, 295 


K 


Kaddish prayer, Aramaic, 35 
Kalthoff, Albert, 26, 40, 41 

Kant, Immanuel, 314 

King of the Jews, Jesus, 400-404 
Koller, Ernst Matthias von, 460 
K6openick, town near Berlin, 142 


L 


Laity, origin of word, 444 

Latifundia system, 58, 67, 100 

Latin language, importance of, 87, 162 

Latins, struggles with Rome, 98 

Lazarus, awakening of, 31, 327, 328 

Lecky, W. E. H., 130 

Livia, Roman empress, 124 

London, England, 87, 98 

Longinus, Greek philosopher, 141 

Lucian, Greek satirist, 424-427 

Luke, Gospel of Saint, 346, 355, 357, 
361, 365-367, 382, 391, 400, 401, 404 

Lumpenproletariat, 55, 67, 71, 72, 96, 
102, 108, 109, 290, 296, 297, 323 

Lusitania, Iberian province, 111 

Luther, Martin, 349, 364, 397, 412 


M 


Maccabeans, 249, 282-284, 288, 291, 360 
Manicheans, 352 

Marc Antony, see Antonius 

Marcia, Roman Christian, 165, 166 
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 138, 


142 

Maria, sells a house, 344, 345 

Mark, Gospel of Saint, 347, 355, 364, 
397-399, 400, 404 

Martial, Roman poet, 340 

Marx, Karl, 108, 203, 230, 240, 442; on 
production based on slavery, 60, 61 

Mary, mother of Jesus, 133, 362, 363 

Materialist conception of history, 10-15 

Matthew, Gospel of Saint, 329-331, 
335, 350-358, 364-367, 373, 388-300, 
400, 404, 406, 417 

Mediterranean civilization, 61, 100, IOI, 
170, 195, 213 

Mehring, Franz, 7 

Memphis, Egypt, 199 

Merchants in ancient times, 88, 90, 91, 
264 


INDEX 


Merivale, Charles, 126 

Mesopotamia, 192 

Messiah, 182, 183, 258, 259, 270, 288, 
290-295, 209, 323, 355, 360-365, 371- 
378, et passim 

Meyer, Eduard, historian, 77-79, 204, 
210, 211, 232 

Midianites, 194, 195 

Millerand, Alexandre, 461 

Mithra, Persian cult of, 120, 121, 154, 
177 

Mithridates, 274 

Moabites, 192 

Mommsen, Theodore, 22, 90, 103, III, 
I4I, 168, 175, 176, 248, 249-253; 267- 
269 

Monasteries, origin of, 449-458 

Monotheism, 177-183, 236-238, 260, 261 

Mount of Olives, 302, 366, 367, 454 


N 


Narcissus, Roman freedman, 157, 158 

Nazareth, 361, 372 

Nebuchadnezzar, 36, 225 

Nebuzar-adan, 224, 225 

Nehemiah, Hebrew prophet, 275, 276, 
279-281 

Neo-Pythagoreans, 28, 20, et passim 

Nero, Roman emperor, 123, 135, 153; 
159-161, 165 

Nerva, Roman emperor, 150 

Nibelungenlied, 42 

Nicomedia, 168, 460 

Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 153 

Nile, valley of, 192 

Nineveh, 192 

Nomadic tribes, 88 ff. 


O 


Odysseus, 53, 59, 60 

Odyssey (Homer), 52, 50, 60, 118 
Oikos system, 451 

Olmsted, quotation from, 60, 61 
Olympia, 427 

Onesikritos, 143 

Origen, 25, 325 

Osiris, Egyptian god, 175 
Owenites, experiments of, 451 


P 
Palestine, 23, I13, I9I-199, 215, 216, 


243, 246, 271, 272, 281, 290, 305, 317, 
310, et passim 


INDEX 


Pallas, Roman freedman, 157, 158 

Pamphylian (Plato’s), 119 

Papacy, origin of, 457 

Paris, France, 87, 98, 307 

Parium, ancient city, 424, 427 

Parthians, 112, 276 

Passion, story of Christ’s, 394-407 

Patricians, in Roman empire, 93-97 

Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, 121, 349-351, 
354, 384-387 

Paulina, Roman lady, 132, 133 

Pedanius Secundus, prefect of the city, 
160 

Peregrinus Proteus, 424-427 

Periktione, Plato’s mother, 126 

Peter, First Epistle of, 412 

Pfleiderer, Otto, 29, 30, 32-35, 120, 121, 
177, 329, 330, 354, 371, 372, 421 

Pharisees, 260, 273, 284-295, 300, 311, 
312 

Philistines, 214, 216 

Philo of Alexandria, 121, 261, 268, 308, 
AI2 

Pheenicians, 100, 192, 198, 200, 207, 200, 
244-246 

Plato, 28, 29, I19, 125, 126, 130, 144, 
181 

Plautus, Roman dramatist, 182 

Plebeians, in Rome, 93-97, et passim 

Piiny,, Ol, 70, 151-153, 163, 165; 168, 
169, 410 

Plotinus, Neo-Platonic 
139-141, 165, 175 

Pohlmann, Robert, 62-64, 73, 154 

Pompey, Roman triumvir, 112 

Pontine Swamps, drainage operations, 
82 

Pontius Pilate, 23, 26, 399-405 

Poppza, Roman empress, 253 

Porphyrius, 141 

Presbyters, 438, 439 

Priest, origin of word, 438 

Proletariat, ancient, 9, 206, 325, 379, 
408-415 

Proletariat, modern, 453-472 

Ptolemy, king of Egypt, 105, 112 

Protestant Bible criticism, 188 

Proteus, Greek god, 135 

Punic Wars, 52, 100 

Puteoli, see Dikezarchia 

Pythagoras, 28, 29, 144, 315 

Pythagoreanism, 314, 315 


philosopher, 


479 
Q 


Quadi, war against the, 138 


R 


Rabirius, Roman banker, 105, 106 

Rationalism in Europe (Lecky), 130 

Real estate profiteering, 411 

Redeemer, see Messiah 

Reformation, German, II, 171 

Renan, Ernest, 307, 463 

Republic (Plato), 119 

Resurrection of Christ, 23, 24, 371-378, 
et passim 

Revelation (Saint John), 294, 360 

Richter, Eugen, 73, footnote 

Roma, Roman goddess, 128 

Rome, rise of the city, 97-101 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 8, 239 

Rufinus, founds a monastery, 454, 455, 
456 

Russian Revolution of 1905, 8 

Russia under the Tsar, 81, 218, 260, 
298, 305 

Rutilianus, Consular, 142 


S 


Sabatier, Paul, 30 

Sabbath worship, Jewish, 249, 252, 253, 
263-266, 317, 389 

Sadducees, 273-284, 301, 311 

Salamis, 104 

Salvianus, Christian writer, 85 

Salvioli, quotations from, 103, 105, 106 

Samaria, Israelitic capital, 222 

Samnites, struggles with Rome, 99 

Sanhedrin, 399 

Sapphira, deceiver, 331, 343 

Schiller, Friedrich, 374 

Schisms in early Church, 443 

Schlosser, Friedrich Christoph, histo- 
rian, 139-141 

Sciences, origin of, 115-117, 129 

Scipios, Roman consuls, 124, 158 

Semitic migrations, 187-190 

Senate, Roman, 102, 127, 150, 160 

Seneca, 120, I21, 122 

Septimius Severus, Roman emperor, 80 

Sermon on the Mount, 34 

Sicarians, terrorist sect, 303 

Sicily, Roman struggle for, 99, 100 

Sidon, 197 


480 

Simon Peter, 359 

Slavery in ancient times, 47-85, 148, 149 

Slavery in the United States, 79 

Slaves, low price paid for, 54-58 

Social ties, weakening of, 115-128 

Society, human, study of, 13 

Socrates, I7I, 204 

Sodom, 382 

Soldiers, in ancient Rome, 80-82 

Soter (redeemer), 127 

Spain, silver mines in, 55, 56, 90 

Spartacus, 70, 154 

Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, 126 

Stoicism, 117, I19, 124 

Stone Age, 53, 88 

Strabo, Greek geographer, 248, 254 

Strauss, David Friedrich, 32, 41 

Suetonius, 27, 108, 100, III, I12, 127, 
128, 160, 270 

Suidas, lexicographer, 425 

Sulla, Roman dictator, 106, 174 

Synod, Church congress, 445 

Syria, 198, 221, 246, 249, 259, 260, 279, 
385 


a 


Tacitus, Roman historian, 26, 133, 134, 
290, 318 

Tax-farming, 105, 106, 295 

Telemachus, son of Odysseus, 52 

Tertullian, father of the Church, 351, 
420, 421 

Thekla, follower of Saint Paul, 350, 
351, 354 

Therapeutze, Jewish monks, 316, 317 

Thomas More and his Utopia (Kaut- 
sky), 210 

Thrasea, suicide of, 125 

Tiber, location of Rome on the, 97 

Tiberias, Sea of, 358 

Tiberius, Roman emperor, 38, 74, 75, 
133, 141, 161, 165, 174, 340 

Tigris, valley of, 192 

Timothy, Paul’s Epistle to, 413 

Titus, Roman emperor, 289, 369 


INDEX 


Trajan, Roman emperor, 30, 150, I5I, 
168, 169, 380 

Tubingen School of Theology, 29 

Tyre, 90, 197, 198 


ie) 


United States, see Slavery, Karl Marx, 
Essenes, Declaration of Independ- 
ence, Owenites 

Usury, in ancient times, 103-108 

Utopia, see Thomas More, Fourierists, 
Essenes, United States 

Utopian communism, 451, 452 


V 


Valla, Laurentius (Lorenzo), 147 

Vandals, destruction by the, 82, 83 

Varus, Quintilius, Roman general, 299 

Vespasian, Roman emperor, 133, 134, 
174, 289, 305, 369, 370 

Vienna, Austria, 87 

Virgil, Roman poet, 127 

Virgin, Holy, see Mary 

Vischer, Eberhard, 30 

Voigt, Wilhelm, Captain of Kopenick, 
142, footnote 

Volkmar, Gustav, 30 

Volscians, struggles with Rome, 98 

Volter, Daniel, 30 


W 


Waldeck-Rousseau, 461 

Weitling, Wilhelm, 463 

Weizsacker, Karl, 30 

Wellhausen, Julius, 193, 222 
Weltgeschichte (Schlosser), 139-141 


x 
Xenophon, 54 


W6 


Yahveh, tribal god, 200, 215, 235-237, 
270 


ia 
Zealots, 295-307, 308 


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